The Curiosity Jar

How do nocturnal animals hunt?

What animal is the smartest?

What would happen if worms didn't decompose dead things?

These are just a few of the questions that my third graders came up with this past year. As a teacher I love it when my students are using their curiosity and asking good questions. 

However, I found myself running into two problems:

1.) I didn't seem to have enough time to throughly answer all of the excellent questions my students were asking.

2.) I found that I needed to do some more research myself before I could give my students the complete and accurate responses that they deserved.

My time-saving solution to this problem was THE CURIOSITY JAR!

Here's how it Works:

When you are in the middle of a lesson and a student has a question that you are not able to answer right away tell the student to put their question in the curiosity jar. The student will silently walk over to the curiosity jar, record their question on a slip of paper, and drop it in the jar. Meanwhile, you are free to continue on with the lesson. 

At a designated time during the week you can go through the questions in the jar with the students once you have had time to sort through them and research answers if needed. 

I have found that the curiosity jar helped me validate the questions that my students were asking while providing me with extra time to research the students' questions and save valuable lesson time. 

All you need is a jar or bowl and small slips of paper. I used an old fish bowl and halved index cards or Post-its. My students loved writing their questions in the jar, and I loved all of the time that was saved. Try the curiosity jar out in your classroom and let me know how it goes.

-Carly

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