{"id":5134,"date":"2019-11-09T08:00:29","date_gmt":"2019-11-09T13:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=5134"},"modified":"2019-11-01T20:06:15","modified_gmt":"2019-11-02T01:06:15","slug":"fostering-curiosity-in-the-classroom-what-percentage-of-animals-are-insects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/fostering-curiosity-in-the-classroom-what-percentage-of-animals-are-insects\/","title":{"rendered":"Fostering Curiosity in the Classroom: “What Percentage of Animals are Insects?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

As teachers, we know that learning works better when students are curious<\/em> about the subject they’re studying.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Obviously.<\/p>\n

So, what can we do to encourage curiosity?<\/p>\n

We could choose a topic that (most) students find intrinsically interesting. Dinosaurs, anyone?<\/p>\n

But, we can’t always work on that macro level. After all, many of us work within a set curriculum.<\/p>\n

What strategies work on a smaller, more day-to-day level? In other words: is there anything we can do in the moment<\/em> to ramp up students’ curiosity?<\/p>\n

Before you read on, pause a moment to ask yourself that question. What do you predict might work?<\/p>\n

Predictions, Please<\/h2>\n

According to a recent study, the very fact that I asked you to make a prediction<\/em> increases your curiosity about the answer.<\/p>\n

Here’s the story<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Researchers in Germany asked college students look at a question, such as “X out of 10 animals are insects.”<\/p>\n

Sometimes the students made a prediction<\/em>: “4 out of 10 are insects.”<\/p>\n

Sometimes they thought about an example<\/em> of an insect: “mosquitoes.”<\/p>\n

Sure enough, students rated their curiosity higher after they made a prediction than after they provided an example.<\/p>\n

And…drum roll please…they also remembered those facts better<\/strong> when their curiosity levels were elevated.<\/p>\n

Don’t Take My Word For It<\/h2>\n

By the way: how did the researchers\u00a0know<\/em> how curious the students were to find the answer?<\/p>\n

First, they asked them to rate their curiosity levels. That’s a fairly standard procedure in a study like this.<\/p>\n

But, they also went a step further. They also\u00a0measured the dilation of the students’ pupils. <\/em>(You may know that our pupils dilate when we’re curious or surprised.)<\/p>\n

And, indeed, by both measures, making predictions led to curiosity. And, curiosity led to better memory of these fact.<\/p>\n

What To Do Next?<\/h2>\n

On the one hand, this study included relatively few students: 33, to be precise.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, we’ve got LOTS of research pointing this direction. Some studies show that pretesting<\/em> helps students learn better, even if the students can’t possibly know the answer to the question on the test.<\/p>\n

So, some kind of early attempt to answer a question (like, say, making a prediction) does seem to help learning.<\/p>\n

At the same time, I think it would be quite easy to overuse this technique. If students\u00a0always<\/em> take a pretest, they’ll quickly learn that they aren’t expected to know the answers and (reasonably enough) won’t bother to try.<\/p>\n

If students\u00a0always<\/em> make predictions, I suspect they’ll quickly pick up on this trick and their curiosity will wear down.<\/p>\n

As teachers, therefore, we should know that this approach can help from time to time<\/em>. If you’ve got a list of important facts you want students to learn, you build predictions into your lesson plan.<\/p>\n

I myself wouldn’t do it every time. But, I think it can be a useful tool–especially if you need to know how many animals are insects. (In case you’re wondering: the answer is, “7 out of 10.” Amazing!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When we ask students to predict the answers to questions, we make them more curious about those answers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":5136,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[15,114],"class_list":["post-5134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-classroom-advice","tag-curiosity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5134"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5139,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5134\/revisions\/5139"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}