Genius Hour Teacher
Observation:
Students watched
the Genius Hour overview video and instantly got excited. The opportunity to
use their inquiry skills for a project of their choosing was new to them. I
found though, that when students heard their friends’ driving questions, they
were easily persuaded to change theirs. This caused repetitiveness and
insincerity in responses, taking away from the overall experience. To make this
a more authentic experience for them, I will conference with students one on
one from the beginning, not sharing driving questions with the class. This will
allow students the chance to come up with a project that is free from peer
influence and more unique to them.
We do GH on
Tuesdays when my Horizons students are gone. So far, only 1 of my 2 classes has
worked on GH projects. This is mainly due to the maturity level of the majority
of the class. As I conference with students during this time, my students need
to be able to problem solve or troubleshoot the small issues without my
assistance. This is possible with Block 2 as they are a more independent group.
They are able to work for an hour without distracting one another, even with my
focus checks every 20 minutes.
I love GH because
my students who never want to participate in anything get to shine. They may
not be interested in the colonization of America, but they love sports, or
traveling, or Pokemon. My most quiet student may not create a video, but her
PowerPoint speaks loudly her interest in helping the environment.
As far as
presentations go, I didn’t inquire how they would present until they had
researched for a couple of weeks. As each project and student are different, I
tried to allow them time to see how they were most comfortable presenting what
they had found. Again, students who don’t know how to utilize their technology
followed behind those who do and a long list of video presentations were
created. This will be another thing that will be chosen in a student-teacher
conference.
As we have had
testing and our PBL unit to focus on recently, students have not had the chance
to present yet. Their presentations are currently scheduled for December 13th.
We started with the video also. That really was a nice way to start. I'd love to see some of the presentations or at least hear what the students came up with.
ReplyDeleteHi September,
ReplyDeleteI am glad that you chose to implement Genius Hour for your class project with your fourth graders. Tell me more specifics about your implementation for Genius Hour and the specific interests your students' are researching? What is your overall purpose for Genius Hour? What are your objectives? I noticed from your Google Drive that the majority of your students appeared to be wanting to inspire others to play a sport such as baseball or soccer or other hobbies. Consider possibilities to expand Genius Hour beyond hobbies to content specific topics.