Blog 4 Genius Hour Kimberly Trott

Blog 4 Genius Hour Journey

I decided to do the Genius Hour concept by having students in my Civics class use one Friday each week for the last 8 weeks of school to create current event articles.  The ideas was to let them choose a topic of their own liking but it had to be current.  The goal was to have them become experts in the class on the topic they were interested in.

So essentially, I told the class they had 30 minutes to research the topic using SC Discus.org.  In that given time, they had to write a long one-paragraph summary of the most important aspects of their article and then present it to the class as an expert. 

The first day I presented this to my Civics class many of the students had a problem just picking a topic, secondly narrowing down the topic when they found the amount of hits overwhelming, and thirdly not even understanding the various sources from which they were recording their information. 

The students in this class struggle with reading and staying on task so I was a bit overwhelmed at first.  Many refused to present and lost points also.  So, I recognized I had to take the time to put the website on the overheard and go through the types of information on Discus.  They were unfamiliar with the differences between a journal, periodical, reference source, academic journal, and newspaper source. In addition, the Discus website already has the article cited in MLA format and many just could not understand how to do this.  All they had to do was click the cite icon and there it was to record.   

By the third presentation they about had it down pat.  Several students still struggled with finding articles that they could actually read.  I tried to help them come up with maybe another topic choice they found interesting but this was still difficult.  These particular students had no idea of what they were even interested in. 

This past Friday I found a web site by Time called the 100 most influential people in the world and this was a good day.  I told them they could choose one person to go off topic on today or stick to their original topic.  Many students choose a popular Christian rapper to present.  They found writing about a pop icon interesting.

I really liked the idea of the Genius Hour current event.  I use to have my class write current events but forced them to do certain topics.  I may not feel like all of their topics are worthy of researching now but it did get them involved and in the process of writing.  I need to also work on soft skills in this class.  The primary one being, being ok with reading and presenting in front of an audience.   

Maybe the final indicator of enjoyment would be the students reminding me it was Friday and Genius Hour day. 

We still have four left to write!