By Tara Isaacs
As a principal I loved spending time in classrooms. No matter where I was in my headspace, a visit to a classroom was a way for me to instantly ground myself back into my love of learning and reasons for choosing education as a vocation, and the best part—it gave me a chance to watch teachers and students interact and make sense of content. When watching those learning lightbulb moments, I was reminded that behind the smiles and head nods was a well-designed path created by their teachers to achieve those moments.
Our brains are complex neural networks that have learned how to process, navigate, and categorize information. Every day students face hundreds of opportunities to take in, sort, save, or delete information. Brain researchers tell us that learning occurs in three stages: immediate memory, working memory, and long-term memory. Let’s look at the immediate memory, also known as the sensory register.
The sensory register stage occurs every moment as we explore the world around us and draws information in through our senses. Brain science reveals that when this new data hits our brains, we have mere seconds to decide if we want to learn more about something or move on to the next thought. This is fascinating and vital information for educators, because knowing that we have limited time to capture the attention of our students necessitates being extra intentional about how we design learning activities to spark students’ curiosity and keep them interested. Cognitive interest cues are a great strategy for doing this.
What are Cognitive Interest Cues and Why Are They Important?
Loosely defined, cognitive interest cues are brief questions, real-world connections, surprising facts, or puzzles and mysteries designed to gain students’ interest and prepare them for engaged learning. At McREL, we’ve previously called these lesson-starting strategies “cues, questions, and advance organizers” and some educators may also know them as anticipatory sets or quick connections. In our recent book The New Classroom Instruction That Works we began referring to them as cognitive interest cues to emphasize that these strategies should be aimed at engaging students’ intellectual curiosity, creating a connection or bridge to the key concepts they’ll encounter during the unit or lesson. And that curiosity becomes a powerful motivator that opens the brain to learning by triggering a dopamine release, enhancing both motivation and retention.
How to Use Cognitive Interest Cues in the Classroom
Cognitive interest cues will look different across grade levels and content areas, but there are several common approaches:
- Activate Prior Learning. Help your students think about what they already know about a topic, and then present new information or questions that help them see a gap in their current knowledge. For example, you could begin an elementary class unit/lesson on fractions by asking students to think about how they count objects and add and subtract numbers (prior learning), and then ask if they can think of a way to evenly slice one pizza so that everyone gets an equal portion.
- Use Curiosity Hooks. Start a unit or lesson by presenting students with a mystery or puzzle that prompts them to speculate about possible answers, a controversy that invites research and informed debate, or a cognitive conflict that challenges their previous understanding or expectations. For example, in a middle school unit/lesson on the environment, you could ask students if they feel that wolves should be protected even though they sometimes kill livestock.
- Relate Learning to Students’ Lives and Communities. We’re all more interested in things that relate to our own lives. So, the more you can help your students see the connections or usefulness of what they’ll be learning right from the start of the unit/lesson, the more engaged and motivated they’ll It helps if you know your students’ interests beforehand: what might catch their attention and be meaningful in the learning for them and help them stay in tune with the instruction. For example, in a high school physics class, you could begin a unit/lesson by saying “Our city/state will be building a new bridge over the nearby river/canyon/highway. What type of bridge would be best? Let’s learn about the physics and engineering that might be needed to design and build this structure …”
There are many more examples and guidance on cognitive interest cues in The New Classroom Instruction That Works (pages 19–22), Learning That Sticks (pages 18–32), and Tools for Classroom Instruction That Works (pages 85–123).
Creating Curiosity-Driven Classrooms
Teaching isn’t just about transferring knowledge, it’s about inspiring learning. By embedding a quick 5- to 10-minute cognitive interest cue at the start of your units and lessons, you can capture your students’ attention and help them forge meaningful connections with their learning that prompt them to want to learn more. And along the way, you’ve created a classroom environment that’s engaging, memorable, and impactful.
So, as you plan your next lesson, consider how you’ll ignite that spark of curiosity from the very beginning. It could be the catalyst your students have been waiting for.
Dr. Tara Isaacs is a life-long learner and practitioner who currently serves as the Executive Director of Learning Services at McREL International.
