Nurturing students' curiosity

This page for teachers accompanies the Being Curious Primary and Secondary resources

Students who are curious are much more likely to be engaged and motivated. We hope that "Hmmm... that's funny..." or "Wow!", will lead to "Why?", and encourage students to use mathematics to explain what has intrigued them... And then perhaps they will be curious enough to ask new questions of their own and explore further. 

 

These are some of the ways in which NRICH suggests you can nurture students' curiosity in a mathematics classroom, with links to problems:

 

• Creating a culture which encourages experimentation and welcomes diverse approaches
  
  Lots of Lollies (age 5-7)
  
  Fruity Totals (age 7-16)
  
  Cuboid Challenge (age 11-16)
  
   
• Introducing contexts which prompt students to ask their own questions
  
  Street Sequences (age 5-11)
  
  Consecutive Numbers (age 7-14)
  
  Polygon Rings (age 11-14)
  
   
• Offering contexts in which students can notice patterns and investigate whether/how/why the patterns might continue
  
  School Fair Necklaces (age 5-11)
  
  Attractive Tablecloths (age 14-16)
  
  Wipeout (age 11-16)
  
   
• Offering students intriguing and puzzling contexts
  
  Five Steps to 50 (age 5-7)
  
  Tumbling Down (age 7-11)
  
  Charlie's Delightful Machine (age 11-16)
  
   
• Presenting unusual situations and contexts
  
  Little Man (age 5-7)
  
  Towers of Hanoi (age 11-14)
  
  Twisting and Turning (age 11-14)
  
   
• Challenging students to explain surprising results
  
  Digit Addition (age 5-11)
  
  Subtraction Surprise (age 7-14)
  
  The Number Jumbler (age 7-14)
  
  Same Number! (age 14-16)
  
   
• Offering situations which challenge students to find powerful strategies that apply to the initial context, but are also generalisable 
  
  Got It (age 7-14)
  
  Tilted Squares (age 11-14)
  
  Odds and Evens Made Fair (age 14-16)

You can find many more activities in the Being Curious Primary and Secondary resources

Questions to consider with your colleagues:

 

This collection of follow-up resources may help you answer the above questions: 

Models for Teaching Mathematics - article by Alan Wigley 

Peter Liljedahl's 14 Practices for Building Thinking Classrooms, in particular Practice 1 (What types of tasks we use in a thinking classroom) and Practice 6 (When, where, and how tasks are given in a thinking classroom)

Here is one possible example of how to start a lesson

Tasks Promoting Inquiry talk given by Dan Meyer in Cambridge

Inquiry Maths offers resources and support for teachers who want to 'establish a culture of curiosity, collaboration and openness in the classroom'

If you'd like to know more about the beliefs that inform the work of NRICH, take a look at What We Think and Why We Think It