How do you present when nobody has to listen to you?
Emotionally engaging presentations are hard to ignore.
Peek inside and check out the reviews at your local Amazon store:
About the book
The big idea
If you work as an informal educator in a visitor attraction or outreach organisation your fundamental challenge is engaging audiences who don't have to listen to you. Without being able to win and keep the attention of your audience, all of your other objectives are impossible to achieve.
Hook Your Audience is a toolkit of performance techniques to emotionally engage child and family audiences in interactive, educational presentations. Its main purpose is to encourage you to reflect more deeply on exactly how you hook your learners using a variety of engagement techniques. Many of these hooks are borrowed from other professional performers, such as magicians, stand-ups, street performers and actors.
Find out if this is the right book for you by reading the endorsements educators have given it.
A string of crystallised nuggets of gold advice in a field for which I thought it would be impossible to write an instruction manual.
Marilena Pace,
STEM content producer
Format
This comprehensive guide groups these techniques into seven tools. The book is written in short chunks so that it can be read tool-by-tool or scanned and dipped into according to your interests. The toolkit:
- explains the principles behind the tools;
- curates hundreds of engagement hooks for you to consider implementing;
- illustrates many of these hooks with examples;
- shares quotations to stimulate reflection;
- summarises the key ideas at the end of each tool; and
- includes a glossary of the performing terminology.
Paperback - 10" x 7"; 339 pages. Approximately 91,000 words.
Contents
Click below to reveal the Table of Contents:
Preface
How to use the toolkit
Hook their attention - the fundamental principles
0.1 Nobody has to listen to you
0.2 Everybody listens to emotional hooks
0.3 You are a performer
0.4 The audience are your directors
0.5 Key ideas about hooking their attention
Tool 1. Connect through your character
1.1 Connect before you communicate
1.2 Be authentic
1.3 Show you are likeable and relatable
1.4 Build your trust bank
1.5 Blend authority with vulnerability
1.6 Key ideas about connecting through your character
Tool 2. Embrace the liveness
2.1 Shhh… most presentation spontaneity is an illusion
2.2 Fixed content
2.3 Engineered content
2.4 Recalled content
2.5 Improvised content
2.6 Key ideas about embracing the liveness
Tool 3. Express your emotions
3.1 The curse of the zombie presenter
3.2 The inexperienced zombie
3.3 The formal zombie
3.4 The uninterested zombie
3.5 The jaded zombie
3.6 The distracted zombie
3.7 The burnt-out zombie
3.8 The over-enthusiastic zombie
3.9 Key ideas about expressing your emotions
Tool 4. Interact through play
4.1 The power of interactive presentations
4.2 Playing for a living
4.3 How not to interact with your audience
4.4 Training the audience to interact
4.5 Audience interaction techniques
4.6 Key ideas about interacting through play
Tool 5. Exploit questions
5.1 Asking the audience questions
5.2 Receiving their answers
5.3 Responding to their answers
5.4 Taking questions from the audience
5.5 Responding to their questions
5.6 Key ideas about exploiting questions
Tool 6. Make your volunteers heroes
6.1 The double-edged sword of volunteers
6.2 Selecting volunteers from willing audiences
6.3 Coaxing volunteers from reluctant audiences
6.4 Welcoming volunteers
6.5 Interacting with volunteers
6.6 Releasing volunteers
6.7 Key ideas about making your volunteers heroes
Tool 7. Relate through humour
7.1 Scalpel please, nurse
7.2 Covert humour principles
7.3 Covert humour techniques
7.4 Overt humour principles
7.5 Overt humour techniques
7.6 Key ideas about relating through humour
How to improve
Notes
Glossary
Recommended books
About the author
Acknowledgements
Index
This is the book for training educational presenters, anyone who has to stand in front of an audience and keep them engaged.
Super practical, tried and tested techniques for any topic. This is a book I could have bought several times over for training museum educators over the years.
Rachel Ayrton,
Learning & Interpretation Manager, King Richard III Visitor Centre
Intended audiences
Of course, anyone is welcome to read this book, but it is primarily aimed at educational presenters who are working in visitor attractions or outreach organisations as a career. This includes a wide range of informal education sectors e.g. museums, science centres, planetariums, zoos, aquariums, historical and natural heritage centres, commercial attractions, outreach organisations, theatre-in-education practitioners and children's entertainers who perform educational shows.
It should also be of interest to public engagement and outreach trainers working in universities, businesses and charities. They are responsible for training staff who engage the public through interactive presentations as part of their role.
Although my direct experience is in science communication, the techniques in the toolkit should be relevant to those who give interactive presentations to schools, community groups and families in most subjects. My subject bias, however, will be most apparent in the examples I've used to illustrate the hooks.
If you work in any of these sectors, please consider reviewing the book for your networks.
Author
Paul McCrory runs HOOK training ltd, a company devoted to helping educators engage their learners. His approach combines interactive performance techniques and psychology. He has spent over 20 years working as an informal science educator and trainer in the UK, Ireland and internationally. The most interesting thing about Paul is that he has a PhD in being interesting.
TL;DR
I've listed lots of easy-to-consume resources below to give you a taste of the book. Tuck in.
This book is delightfully genius, and more important than that, it's USEFUL! It's so rare to find such a positive book, about genuinely caring for your audiences and a presenter's impact.
Dr Sai Pathmanathan,
author and science education consultant
Ordering
Buy the paperback from your local Amazon store: e.g.
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Get a quotation for a bulk discount of books for staff development
The most comprehensive guide to on-stage engagement techniques for school age audiences (primary and secondary).
Tom Pringle (aka Dr Bunhead)
Resources
You know those movies where you take a pill and then know ‘everything’? This is the book version of that pill. It is pure wisdom in paper form - jampacked with practical nuggets to improve your science communication skills in fast forwards.
Fran Scott,
Engineering Presenter and Science Communication Consultant
If professional standards are to be raised, audiences and learners captivated, and the full objectives of informal science presentations are to be achieved, then this is the book to be read and applied. Order a set of copies now!
Colin Johnson,
Hon Fellow, Ecsite - the European Network of Science Centres and Museums in SPOKES magazine (Full review)
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Write a review of the book on amazon or for any online or print publication for informal educators.
improve
They say your first book will be the worst one you ever write. I'd appreciate any feedback which can help me improve the book. Including any tpyos 🙂
I honestly, can't recommend this book enough. Even if you have some background in performance, there are so many thoughtful insights and practical suggestions to help you get your message over to other people.
Siân Bevan,
Arts Project Manager
Reading it feels like being part of a conversation - this is the voice of a generous expert, full of knowledge and experience, and delighted to share with us everything he’s learned about his subject.