How do we get students excited and curious about mathematics?
When students are curious they are more likely to be engaged. But why? What, is curiosity and how does it work? A study published in the journal Neuron suggests that the brain's chemistry changes when we become curious, helping us better learn and retain information . In their study Grubner and Ranganath(2014) explored how curiosity influences memory. They found that states of high curiosity enhance both the learning of interesting information, and also the more boring stuff. Applying this to the classroom maybe we could interpret this as "students will learn more about topics they are curious about" The authors of the study also discussed how much of what a person experiences in a day is forgotten. This made me wonder, how much of what happens during an average school day do our students remember? How do we get students excited and curious about mathematics? Do we uncover the magic? Eddie Woo, Mathematics teacher and youtube star says "It