At the end of each school
year I try to find one new idea that I would like to research over the summer and
implement the next year. Last year I had
heard about Genius Hour and knew I HAD to try it! So, when I heard about this assignment I was
so excited!! Since we were in the middle
of an integrated PBL unit, I knew time was going to be a factor. Our current unit was on the contributions of
Native Americans and their impact on America.
We had already started the unit with discussion, reading, and research of
the first Thanksgiving and three different Native American tribes located in
different parts of the United States. My
students were so excited about this unit and would constantly ask me questions
about Pilgrims, their trip on the Mayflower, Squanto, etc. that I decided to
have those questions be the driving force for Genius Hour.
To begin,
I reviewed thick questions with students and allowed them to use their anchor
chart in their reading notebook to help devise questions about Pilgrims or
Native Americans. This was a great
opportunity to revisit such an important skill. After students wrote their thick question on a
sticky note, they posted on our wonder wall to share with the rest of the
class. My students were so excited to
see not only their question, but also their peers’ questions hanging up. My wonder wall is located beside our
classroom door and as we line to leave I often hear, “Wow, Eden asked a really
good question. I can’t wait to hear her
research.” or “Elliott did some great
thinking on his question.” These words make my teacher heart sing! J
Once students had their thick question it was time to research. My students have a lot of experience researching
so this wasn’t something I need to stop and “teach”. While researching, students started forming
other “I wonder” questions which we used a different colored sticky note to add
to our wonder wall. Due to time, my
students are only able to work on this for the last fifteen minutes of
class. We are currently in the process
of finishing up our research and preparing our presentations. In the future, I
plan on replacing my current morning work research station with a Genius Hour
project. This will give my students more
time each week to work and they will get to drive their own learning. I have
loved seeing and hearing the excitement my students have and I do believe they have
found a passion project!
Hi Lindsey,
ReplyDeleteI am excited that you chose Genius Hour as your pbl research project to implement this semester. I was glad to read in your post that Genius Hour was a concept you had heard about previously and wanted to try it out and the timing was great for you to implement this structure with your current social studies unit. You shared how you used your wonder wall beside your class door to post student driving research questions for their genius hour projects and how you consistently devoted the last fifteen minutes of class each day (which totals to over an hour each week) for students to research their questions. You mentioned how you want to move your genius hour research time to a morning work station in order to provide students with more time! In reviewing the evidence of your Genius Hour implementation in your Genius Hour folder in our class in Google drive folder I was able to see your lesson plans and your examples of students' questions on the wonder wall and their research in action. Thanks!