In this paper I report the results of a pilot study in which Finnish Grade 8 students answered a survey and, using a Likert scale, said how much they considered specific activities in the history classroom to be generally important or personally interesting. The activities included, for example, discussing the morality of specific past events, discussing topics that are important in the history of the student’s own family, and reflecting on the basis of history what may happen in the future. An exploratory analysis was carried out with the focus on the numerical mean value of the students’ answers and the correlation between the students’ views on the importance and interest of the specific activity. Attention was paid only to the extreme values, given the methodological limitations of the study. The aim of the study was to determine whether distinguishing between the students’ judgments of the general importance and/or personal interest of the selected history classroom activities yields relevant information about how their interests meet the formal history curriculum.