Blog Post 4: Genius Hour

I loved implementing Genius Hour in my classroom. I had heard so much about it last year, yet never got around to working on it. It just so happened that this assignment fell at a perfect time for me to implement it. After our Veteran program rehearsals and program and ACT Aspire testing this week, my students have been able to work on their projects. It provides the students a break from testing and they are all excited to work on their project. To introduce Genius Hour, I showed my students the Genius Hour video. They were amazed that it started from Google and were already excited about what they were about to do. We started by discussing possible topics for Genius Hour, as I left it wide open for my students to choose. After we had topics, we talked about a driving question. I had already discussed driving questions with my students in regards to our PBL unit, so my students had somewhat of an idea already. We discussed thin vs. thick questions and what a good question would be for our project. Some students were able to come up with theirs easier than others, depending on their topic. Some topics were very broad and needed to be narrowed in a little bit.

While we are not finished with our Genius Hour projects yet, something that worked well for my class was getting to choose any topic. Students have topics ranging from Nerf guns, hybrid animals, cotton candy, to playing the violin.  While we have lost a lot of instruction time from program rehearsals and testing, the students have really enjoyed researching what they want to. I also noticed that my lessons tended to be more focused and held the students attention. Whether it is due to the time of year or the lessons I’ve been teaching, I tend to lose my students’ attention. The paraphrasing lesson was a bit of a longer one, but my students were engaged the entire time. I knew that I needed to teach about how to paraphrase notes because I had noticed my students just copying, and I also had two students tell me that they didn’t know how to take notes in their own words.

While the project is still in the works, something that is not going too well so far is the work time. Many of my students use the time to play around or talk with their friends. I have had a few students want to change topics to what their friend is doing in the hopes of working together. For these students I told them that they needed to find something they were passionate about so that it would sustain their interest. I am not sure what to do with these students. If they are no longer interested in their topic, then I would like them to change, but I don’t want them to change if they really just want to do something close to their friend. For these students that have wanted to change, I told them that they must first go back and write a new driving question. Since the DQ needs to be the kick start to the project, I told them they must have that. We are on day 4 of Genius Hour (as of the time I am writing this) so I hope that my students can solidify their topics so they can spend our time in class working on researching and creating their product so they can share what they’ve learned. I have also already had students ask me when this will be due. I am wondering, do I give them a due date so soon? I do not know how often I am going to do Genius Hour after testing is over (my thoughts right now are once a week). Going from everyday to once a week, it is going to take my students longer to complete their projects, and of course, some might take much longer than others. So, as of right now, I am leaving it open and will see where my students go with their creative juices.

My students are loving Genius Hour; granted, who wouldn’t?! We did not get to Genius Hour one day after testing and at the end of the day one child said in an annoyed voiced, “Hey! We didn’t do Genius Hour today. Are we going to do it tomorrow?” After only implementing it for a couple of days, he was so disappointed that we had to skip one day. As I mentioned before, I have found my students staying more focused during the lessons, and then actually using the skills we practiced in their note taking. I also noticed my students taking a greater interest in each other during our share time. One day, we had a whole class share where we gathered at the carpet and shared our topic, DQ, and/or a fact we had learned. While it took a long time, the students were eager to share, and eager to hear, what their classmates had chosen. I am excited to see where Genius Hour leads my students, and me, and can’t wait until we get to share our passions with the world.