Genius Hour - Jessica Barwick

After researching all the possibilities for genius hour, I chose to create an immersion table with a noticings chart, combined with a wonder wall.  Since we are finishing up our westward expansion unit, I decided to create an immersion table leading into our next unit on inventions and immigration to America.  I thought that a great way to introduce our next PBL on the contributions of immigrants would be to include items that are inventions created only by immigrants!  The first thing I noticed was that I learned a great deal from creating the table!  I had to do my own research, and I learned that so many inventions or ideas for inventions came from immigrants.  My table includes blue jeans, Christmas lights (to represent the idea of electricity), light bulb, radio, gyroscope, video game equipment, microphone, flash drive, picture of telephone, and picture of youtube logo.  I also included large pictures that represent different cultures as well as items from our travels, such as a fan from China and Matryoshka dolls from Russia.

When the students came in, they were immediately interested in the table and wanted to check out the items.  I allowed a few students at a time to go to the table and look at the items more closely.  They wrote their observations on a sticky note and added it to the noticings chart behind the table.  When I read the notes on the chart, I saw that some students made observations like "the wiimote was heavier than the light bulb" or just made a list of the items.  But many students made astute observations (even things I hadn't thought of!) like the fact that many used electricity, are used for entertainment, and were items from other cultures.  I assumed they wouldn't know they were all ideas or inventions from immigrants to America, but I was glad to see they figured out that many items were from or represented other countries.  I'm anxious to tell them the connection between all the items, and I believe they will be more excited about this unit because of the immersion table!

I put the noticings chart on a class Wonder Wall because I believe they are connected.  The immersion table piqued the curiosity of many students, and they started asking questions.  Great questions come from great inspiration, so I was hoping the table would encourage new "wonderings" for our wonder wall.  Unfortunately, the class "wonderings" were not really related to the table, but that's okay!  Students were told to write any question or wonder statement and pin it to the wall, based on anything they wanted to learn more about or were interested in.  Some students didn't have anything they wanted to add to the Wonder Wall until they saw or read some others' ideas.  I assumed I would have a lot of "thin" questions, but surprisingly, most of the questions on the Wonder Wall would require significant research.  Many are about specific people, because one person started asking about Beyonce and others followed suit with other famous people.  Some are too broad, like "I wonder about constellations" or "I wonder about Christmas lights," but some were very insightful, like "I wonder what it's like to be born a Native American." Overall, I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of wonderings.  I'm going to leave the Wonder Wall questions up for a while and give students time to add to it.  Eventually, I want students to choose one of their own wonderings or be inspired by someone else's, then form it into a driving question for genius hour.  I want to pilot genius hour with my students that are not in band or strings after Thanksgiving (we will have 45 minutes twice per week), then with both classes in the Spring.  My vision is for students to continue to add to the Wonder Wall as questions organically arise from their natural curiosity, and I hope it will inspire lots of independent research beyond the classroom!

Overall, it was a fun, learning experience for me and the students to implement the immersion table, noticings chart, and Wonder Wall in the classroom.  I even extended a noticings chart into my after school writing club, where we did a poetry text set immersion and wrote our observations.  Kids love hands on learning, and they are constantly asking questions, so the combination of these can certainly lead to more engagement in the classroom!