5 Capturing the students’ interest

Now read Case Study 3.

Case Study 3: Mr Kumar stimulates the students’ curiosity

Mr Kumar was working on developing his Class VIII’s knowledge about plants by exploring ways to classify them, and wanted to stimulate his students’ curiosity. He explains what he did to start the topic.

I gathered together a collection of leaves from local trees and put these on the table at the side in the classroom. I did not name them, but numbered them from one to ten and put up a notice that asked my students to look at the leaves and to think what sort of questions they would like to ask about them. I left a pen and some small pieces of paper beside a box labelled ‘Questions’. Students did not have to put their name on their piece of paper.

I was not sure if I would get any questions, but several students noticed the display as they came in and I saw them looking and talking about the leaves. Some tried to identify them and others were thinking about questions. At the end of the week I found seven questions in the box. This pleased me, especially as they were good questions, such as:

  • How do we classify leaves?
  • Why do leaves have different vein patterns?
  • Why are there so many different leaf shapes?
  • Do all leaves have the same internal structure?
  • What do leaves do?

I told the class that I would be using some of their questions in the next lesson. I planned to think about which questions could be used for investigations that the students could do. My first thoughts were to look at ways of sorting and classifying leaves by their shape. I prepared a sheet [see Resource 5] to help students think about the criteria and questions that they could use to sort them.

Pause for thought

  • Have you ever asked your students for their questions like this?
  • Could you use this idea of a question box to stimulate interest about your next topic?

By providing contexts for students to raise purposeful and productive questions, you are encouraging them to be more curious and observant about the world around them. Arousing curiosity is an important part of science education, because it encourages interest in what things are and why they do what they do. Students want to know and understand. Such experiences can affect how your students respond to their environment and develop empathy for their world.

Activity 4: Other ways to stimulate students’ questions

Think how you could stimulate your students’ curiosity in your next topic. What small change could you make in your classroom that would raise their interest and ask questions? For example, could you do any of the following?

  • Display an article from the paper about a problem and leave a sheet of paper for students to ask what more they would like to know about the problem.
  • Set up a display that asks student to add their questions to it.
  • Use a photograph.
  • Use an object or collection of objects.
  • Set up a question box for each new topic.
  • Identify what you want to do. Then set it up and watch your students’ reaction, setting a time limit for the questions.

Think how you will respond to their questions. Remember that you do not have to answer all the questions immediately and you may want to look again at Resource 2, which shows you how you could respond to the different categories of questions.

Pause for thought

  • How did your students respond to the stimulus?
  • What kind of questions did they produce and how will you handle them?

A topic like plants is not always seen as exciting by most students. But by doing more practical, hands-on activities – such as encouraging the students to handle pictures and objects, talk about their various features, and raise questions about their structure, shape and colour – they are much more likely to be interested and remember. So using both your own questioning skills to stimulate interest and encouraging your students to raise questions will bring science to life – see Resource 6, ‘Using questioning to promote thinking’.

Just telling your students ‘This is a mango leaf’ and giving the correct biological name will not necessarily help them retain the information, as there is no context. Allowing them to raise their own questions and using these as the starting point will give them much more ownership of the topic. More productive questions that your students raise can then lead to research or investigations, which also stimulates their interest.

4 Encouraging the students to ask questions

6 Summary