Last week, I introduced my version of a three legged stool for learning. This week, I’d like to focus on curiosity, how it links to the ISY Learning Cycle, strategies for engaging students with their natural curiosity, and providing ways we can do this virtually.

After questioning, investigating, and modeling for two hours in one workshop, I still to this day do not know how the Drinking Bird works, but I refuse to simply Google the answer because I was inspired by the presenter’s steadfastness in not simply giving us the answer. It would be through finishing the stages of the learning cycle that, with support, I will one day find my answer. This is not to say as educators we do not need to balance the range of students’ emotional learning between anxiety (or even fear) and boredom. The challenge for teachers is to hit what Steve Barkley would say is the “sweet spot” for ideal learning conditions.  

Educational researchers have learned quite a bit over the last few decades curiosity has on achievement, and what I have found to be true is that strategies we use with students to support their curiosity will activate their prior knowledge, initiate additional questioning, foster a growth mindset, and provide the teacher with the necessary data to plan lessons accordingly. This is where the ISY Learning Cycle can help by engaging students through the investigation stage of learning. Whether you are introducing knowledge, skills, and concepts through learning, service learning, or design, the investigation stage of the cycle provides opportunities to sustain their natural curiosity. As we discussed in the pre-service days, placing a magnifying glass over investigation becomes critical to establish a solid foundation for future learning through the rest of the stages.

Here is a scenario of what this could look like for a virtual lesson. 

Activating Prior Knowledge

During a Zoom lesson, Mrs. Williams is currently anchoring her students’ learning experiences around the NGSS Performance Expectation 5-ESS2-1 – Develop a model using an example to describe ways the geosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and/or atmosphere interact. She is hoping to have students transfer their understanding to one or more of the following areas of the purposes of the unit:

• NGSS Cross Cutting Concept of Systems and System Models
• SDG #6 – Clean Water & Sanitation
• Interdisciplinary Concept of Representation
• ISY Learner Attribute of Reflection

Her anchoring phenomena for this performance expectation is a looping video of Mouth Clouds.

Mrs. Williams has her students watch the video several times and then engages students with a round of observations (what they see/hear) by having them go to a shared Google Doc. While they are working, she highlights key words students write of terms that are most important for their eventual understanding of the standard. What has now been created is a word wall of terms that has been 100% student created based on their prior knowledge. Mrs. Williams will then move all highlighted words to the top of the page so students can easily see them.

This strategy is a far cry from when I was growing up where I would just copy down definitions provided to me by flipping to the textbook glossary. Instead, students are constructing their own meaning to the phenomena based on any prior knowledge they have. At this time, it does not matter if they are right or wrong; but over time, they will be provided with more information so they can move through the Learning Cycle.

Engaging students through making appropriate observations about a provocation provides students with a way to activate their curiosity and leads directly to students asking questions. In the next post, we’ll look at how teacher can continue to foster students’ curiosity through their ability to ask questions.