Blog Post #4 Genius Hour

Blog Post #4 Genius Hour

When I first began to contemplate how I was going to approach this, I first had to keep in mind that I was going to have to collaborate with another teacher to carry out my vision. Genius Hour can be seen as overwhelming and unfamiliar to many educators on how to execute and effectively implement this in their classroom. My first logical thought was to test something like this concept in an exploratory classroom.  I decided to use an 8^th grade Financial Literacy classroom in order to try my hand at Genius Hour in middle school. I knew the co-teacher was very flexible and willing to shift curriculum in order to make this happen. The other part to why I chose this group was because I was familiar with their varying degrees of ability levels due to having taught or co-taught within their 7^th grade class.

Planning the journey:

The first thought I had was how to get students to buy into this way of thinking and the end project. I knew my first challenge was going to be this learning was happening in an exploratory class.  Although many recognize the importance, others do not apply as much effort due to it being an exploratory class. The idea I had going into this was first relying heavily on my co-teach partner to help instruct me on the varying abilities levels of the students within the structure of his classroom. This was of utmost importance and we constantly traded ideas back and forth so to make the appropriate modifications to the plan. Mr. Kirby, who teaches the class, had begun to lay down some hints that a project like this was going to happen very soon. This was helpful because the students were prepared when I stepped in to begin co-teaching. When coming up with the initial concept, I wanted it to be very much like an authentic Genius Hour. I wanted their interest to drive the heart of the learning. With this concept in mind, I decided that they would be able to research anything that they were interested in learning more about. This was even the way I approached it with them. The student would be given the background information of what Genius Hour was all about. Since this was a financial literacy class, I wanted to make sure that all the business aspects were connected with this learning process. Genius Hour was looked at in this classroom as a way to conduct a unique business approach with potential employees. From this, it was decided that students would take their interest and find a way to turn it into a business. The essential question, “how can I take my interest and turn it into a business” became the guiding focus for everything that we did in the class. I did not want to construct a ton of guidelines due to making limitations and felt that this was be something that we developed along the way. To get started, I pulled a video of Genius Hour and a quick Google Slide show to present the business behind Genius Hour.  The next thing I did was create a handout that gave them an overview all the components of Genius Hour, the expectations and how the grade would be calculated from this. At all times, I had to be considerate to my co-teacher by making sure he would be able to have some grades from this.  The other information that I constructed was a genius hour daily reflection log so that the students could chart down what they felt they had accomplished for the day and where they needed to go. They also had a note taking log that record their websites and notes with their information. Since Mr. Kirby has a Google Classroom, he uploaded all the important documents on here is well. I also had a template that they would use for their sales pitch and several rubrics for the items to be assessed.

The implementation:

The Genius Hour implementation began slowly. The first day, I came into the classroom and shared with them the video for Genius Hour. After that, we viewed the Google Slide presentation that covered all the fundamentals. The class spent their time discussing thoughts and asking questions about how this process would occur. We let them start to think about a topic that they wanted to learn more about. The next day, we spent the class period taking their topic and turning it into their focus question. The students were shown what are appropriate questions such as ones that you could not google and find the answer. Ones of the first struggles the students faced was turning their topic into not only a focus question but also something that would eventually become a business. Mr. Kirby and I spent the majority of the time conferencing one on one with the students to help them take their interest into a business. From there, we told them to begin their research. There were plenty of times students would start with their topic and then realize it was not something that they could really research, turn into a business or of real interest to them. After every session, Mr. Kirby and I would talk about things to improve, concerns that were noted and general just the sessions. It was during one of these talks that it become abundantly clear that more ground rules were needed with the research. Some students were stating that they were finished even though clearly their research lacked. We also discussed how some of the students were not as focused on the given tasks. From our reflection time, a new strategy emerged. We realized that more guidelines that are specific were going to have to be administered to help guide the students and make them more reflective of the task and work they were completing. The next day the mini-lesson consisted helping them to understand the importance of gathering five to six beneficial and reliable resources. They were shown how to take down the information to help them with understanding their idea so they can express it to others. This modification provided the clarity needed to help progress their project along. Every reflection session we had after class allowed us to redirect the desired learning and helped the students make sense of their task.  Students were either not effectively managing time, struggling to formulate their plan or lacked motivation. This lead to use deciding to separate the class into two groups. We would start the day out together sharing the mini-lesson while reviewing their goals for the day. From there, Mr. Kirby would keep certain students with him and I would take the rest back to my classroom. Another great idea that came from our conversations, were checkpoints. Each student would be individually conferenced with Mr. Kirby or myself. A document was constructed on our Google Drive so we could both be aware of what was going on. A series of questions such as focus question, research, next step, business plan and presentation were asked to the student in a one-on-one session. This became a great way to help students really step back and think about their project. It help us to learn where they were going with the project and the steps needed to help support them. I was blown away at the concept and levels of discussions we had during this time. It seemed to be mutually beneficial for the students. It gave them an outline of where they needed to finish and how to get there. Truly, I think without the reflective piece at the end of each session, these ideas may not have surfaced nor have been as organic since they were derived from students’ needs. The next step was to explain through our mini-lesson about their sales pitch. After much thought, I felt like using the elevator pitch method would connect back to my students. They would be able to take that model and curtail it to something that worked for them. There were two forms posted to their Google Classroom for them to use. While working on their sales pitch, students would have one-on-one consultations with me. They would practice their elevator pitch while I timed them. The dividing of the class helped exponential as well. It gave us more one-on-one time with the students, lessening the distraction and increasing the amount of work created. Students are now finishing their presentation to which I have already shared a mini-lesson on the rubric so they know what we are looking for. They will have to present this to a panel of three. The hope is not only focusing on their interests but also helping them to dive into public speaking, understanding how to start up a business and turning an idea into something concrete.

The Results:

Reflection with both teacher was the most beneficial strategy used during Genius Hour. By talking through the behaviors we noticed, Mr. Kirby and I were directly able to respond through mini-lessons, conferencing or desired expectation. It was amazing at how they took something that was of interest to them and turned it into a business. I really learned a lot from this attempt. Some of my new knowledge is when co-teaching, reflective discussions are a must, give guidelines but make modifications as the Genius Hour evolves to create more meaningful learning, mini-lessons are key, conferencing is a must to not only help you stay connected with the students’ learning but helping them stay on task. The way students presented their businesses were thoughtful and creative. It ranged from a reality TV show about a sorority makeover to fishing magazines for varying levels to packets for volley players to websites.