iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

"After dissecting our math lessons for over 3 years, we came to realize that we could classify the most important elements required to create memorable math moments in a 3-part framework we call “Making Math Moments That Matter”:

• Spark Curiosity
• Fuel Sense Making
• Ignite Your Next Moves

This framework is not intended to be three specific steps that must be followed in order, but rather three overarching elements that must be present in some form to ensure your lessons make math moments that matter to your students.

Let’s dive into each part of the framework to unpack each element."

Jamie Jirout was not the sort of student who simply took a textbook at its word. In her first semester of college, she asked her psychology professor if she could assist in the professor’s research. Jirout’s interest wasn’t fueled by the fact that she found the coursework convincing — quite the opposite.

“I’d read something in the textbook and then I’d think, that doesn’t really make sense with what I’ve seen, how do they know that?” she recalls. She wanted to reconcile that gap and so, threw herself into research.

Her quest for answers has propelled her career to the present day. Jirout is now an assistant professor of education at the University of Virginia, where one of her primary research interests is studying curiosity in the classroom.

New research links curiosity in young children with later academic success.

The new study from researchers at the University of Michigan found that curious children are better able to grasp basic math and reading.

According to research, intellectual curiosity is the hidden force that drives learning, critical thinking, and reasoning. Curiosity helps children seek and acquire new knowledge, skills, and ways of understanding the world. It is at the heart of what motivates young people to learn and what keeps them learning throughout their lives.

Most of us know that many children can achieve good grades without being curious — by understanding the system of test-taking and dutifully doing their homework.

Curious children, on the other hand, spend a great deal of time reading and acquiring knowledge. Why? Because they sense a gap between what they know and what they want to know — not because they are motivated by grades.

When kids are in curiosity’s grip, they often forget the immediate goals at hand because they are preoccupied with learning. This was the case with young people I interviewed for my book, Tomorrows Change Makers: Reclaiming the Power of Citizenship for a New Generation.  Many of them were so focused on public service that they missed school deadlines or didn’t have time to study for exams.

The young people I interviewed defined their success differently than many of today’s youth. They wanted to learn, not just achieve good grades.

Wow. What a concept.

Stimulate your students' curiosity by encouraging valuable questions and tinkering, looking for teachable moments, and building lessons around current events and critical thinking.

Last year our elementary school opened a makerspace. The colorful space is always full of active learners using new tools and materials to advance their learning. The room itself has sparked the interest of teachers and students to try new things and explore ideas that they are passionate about. Although science, technology, engineering, and math are logical connections in the makerspace, we are also working to integrate meaningful connections to literacy that spark curiosity and engage our learners.

When Orville Wright, of the Wright brothers fame, was told by a friend that he and his brother would always be an example of how far someone can go in life with no special advantages, he emphatically responded, “to say we had no special advantages … the greatest thing in our favor was growing up in a family where there was always much encouragement to intellectual curiosity.”