Course 02 - Blog 04 - Smith, Robert - Genius Hour Project

Genius Hour

After learners completed their final project-based learning (PBL) assignment, I asked them to complete a Reflection document (Schoenbart, 2016). I did not grade these reflections choosing instead to use them as guidelines for me going forward with PBL. Through this document, learners were able to evaluate themselves. Each one completed a 50-point rubric and self-assigned their scores. The rubric was divided into three parts, the actual rubric, the reflection, and an evaluation of the concept of Genius Hour.

The Rubric. Learners had to evaluate their work and score themselves supporting their choices.

The Reflection. Here, learners answered questions having to reflect on their learning and vividly detail what they did. Questions for part two  included:

a)      What was the value of Genius Hour for you? Consider the skills you learned and practiced, the research and writing you completed, the knowledge you learned, and the product you created. What did you find most valuable?

b)      What did you like or learn from? And what wasn’t valuable? Why?

c)      How did you feel about your presentation? What went well? What could you have done better?

d)      Would you consider your project a success? A failure? Somewhere in between? Consider your work and effort, your proposal, and your product, and then explain your answer.

e)      How did you apply yourself in this project? Did you work to the best of your ability, individually or with peers?

f)       What advice would you have for teachers who are doing Genius Hour projects in the future? What about for students? What would you tell them that would make the project go more smoothly or more successfully?

Evaluate Genius Hour. I included this section to get feedback from my learners on this Genius Hour so that I could better plan for the next one.

Below, I’ve included a few responses learners provided.

For you, what was the value of Genius Hour?

-          Genius Hour forced me to think and be creative.

-          The most valuable part of Genius Hour was letting us express ourselves by letting us learn about whatever we want.

What advice do you have teachers with Genius Hour?

-          I think it is easier to work at my own pace so I liked how we could work independently. I would tell teachers to make sure that their students are confident about their work.

What advice do you have students with Genius Hour?

-          Choose a topic that you want to learn more about. Don’t choose something that you think will be easy or that you’ll lose interest in. Then, learn as much as you can about it as you can.

-          Make sure you don't fall behind on any of your goals.

These comments were just a few of the reflections my students provided. I like this type of reflection and would love to make it a more regular part of my classroom. Genius Hour appears to be great for developing student voice with choice and audience.

References

Schoenbart, A. (2016, June 06). #GeniusHour: What Students Think. Retrieved from Teach & Learning: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14CzDMtXX7L6fK6avkacWMUyPth1ZC47e_fkB2LH0cJY/edit

MEDIA:

Genius Hour Reflection Template

Course 2 Blog #3 Clark H. Maxwell- Student Agency

Student agency:

     As I looked over the NTN  Agency Rubric many of the categories stuck out to me.  Then, as I thought more about it, it came to me.  This is what coaching is all about.  We get athletes from each of the four columns in this chart.  Our goal is to get them to a point where they are being coached and not taught.   As coaches we challenge athletes to give their best effort all the time.  We build their confidence in little bits at a time in practice.  We show them video of how they did so they know what they need to work on.  The benchmark that they try to achieve is winning football games.
     In my class, I try to challenge students to give their best.  They always know where they stand when it comes time for fitness testing.  I challenge them to just get a couple of more reps, or laps each time.  The come to me and ask if they improved, and we celebrate if they did.  We also have a plan if they didn't.  Nothing written down, but a verbal agreement.  I want them to want to be the best version of themselves they can be, regardless of score.  Always give your best because regret is hard to live with.  For the most part this works well and for others it may take a little more relationship building with them.  They have to know that "I" want them to do their best all the time because I care.  The ones I get to that point really end up doing well.


The Power of Yet:

     Wow, this was great.  How great would it be to have a class full of students who strive to tackle things that they are not experts in?  To go outside the box in unknown territory and have to figure things out on their own.  We absolutely do not see this enough.  How much better would our schools operate if this were the case.  But, I believe, that this concept lies solely in the students themselves.  If you want to do better, want more for your future than what you have been living in, you can change that.  Yes, you may be facing an uphill battle for a long time.  In my experience, the students who tackle this head on are ones who end up making it in the world.

Blog #3 Student Agency Makisha Fowler-Miller

Blog 3: Growth Mindset/Collaboration/Student Agency

The Growth Mindset vs. the Fixed Mindset- the Carol Dwerk video was very interesting! I have noticed that many of my students over the years have had a fixed mindset. It is very rare that I have encounter a student that has a growth mindset and that is disturbing for me. I have recently noticed since I have an honors class, that many of my honors students love a challenge and are intrigued by having the time to figure out things on their own while many of my low flyers choose to depend on my knowledge to further their understanding.

Student Agency: Looking at the NTN Agency Rubric, as a teacher, I often have a hard time getting students to use effort and practice to grow concept. If the student understands how to do a problem, the student feels great and does not mind the practice. However, when the student has a hard time grasping the concept they seem to have a hard time understanding why they should practice in order to grow their understanding. Another concept that I find difficult is having students find personal relevance in their everyday work. My goal is to work on introducing lessons to students using more real world applications. The final and largest concept of the rubric that stuck out to me was the seeking of feedback. My students do not show evidence of accepting and actively seeking feedback to revised work. They are usually content with whatever they turn in so I really need to work on this concept. 

Sarah Garner; Genius Hour

Genius Hour Project

Sarah Garner

For my genius hour project I had my students complete two inquiry based assignments. The first assignment my students used their knowledge of slope intercept form (what they learned in the PBL project) to learn point-slope form. The students knew where to locate the slope in slope intercept form, and they used this knowledge to locate the slope in point-slope form. My students exceeded my expectations with this assignment. From experience, since it is not an assignment they are used to, I thought I would be met with hesitance and resentment. However, my students actually enjoyed it and learned a lot from it. I actually did my own little experiment. I completed the assignment with my first two blocks, but for my last one I did not. I started with just normal notes and was going to see how it went. After the first problem in the notes, my students were very lost. They did not understand why the point was positive when it came after the negative in the formula. The students that completed the inquiry activity came to this conclusion on their own. Since they came to that conclusion on their own, they understood why it was positive even though it came after a negative. At that moment, whem all my students were very

confused, I stopped notes and did the activity with my last block. I was very happy with this assignment, and I will definitely do it again.

The second inquiry assignment that I had my students complete was on parallel and perpendicular lines, and the difference in their slopes. The students were able to use color pencils and rulers. I felt like they enjoyed it. I loved this assignment because it incorporated every topic that they have been learning thus far. It incorporated graphing using slope intercept and finding your equation given two points. The student were asked some questions throughout the assignment that led them to the conclusion that perpendicular lines have opposite reciprocal slope and parallel lines have same slope. The students taught themselves! I felt like that students held on to this information more because they learned it themselves. I did have to make some adjustments from class to class. I learned that I had to stop at sections to make sure the students graphed the lines correctly and the math was completed correctly. I did this because if the students did not have the math right they would get the questions wrong later. So, for each class after my first, I broke the assignment up into sections.

Sorry that the last pictures are turned, not sure how to rotate them.

Blog #2- Video Analysis and Self Reflection Makisha Fowler-Miller

Video Analysis and Self Reflection

Identifying What’s Important: The most important detail in my PBL is that students realize that math is used every day in the real world. I wanted students to realize that adding and subtracting decimals is a part of their everyday life from counting money, to how many miles they travel to and from school, to how many ounces of water they drink per day. 

The students were able to discover the connection of decimals to the everyday world by planning a daily itinerary of food, travel, and expense during their dream vacation.

Making Connections: The students quickly made connections with decimals and the real world. They were excited about being able to spend money anyway they liked. The students surprised me because I expected them to only add and subtract decimals but I soon realized that they were multiplying and dividing the cost for themselves as a group and individually. The students also quickly realized that money does not go far and had to do like many adults and rethink their plan. I had one student that told me that he had been bugging his mom about taking him on vacation but now he realizes how expensive it is and was not going to bug her anymore.

Incorporating Contextual Knowledge: To incorporate contextual knowledge, I grouped my students based on their different abilities. I had to separate my high flyers and group them with some of my students that I knew would have a hard time realizing different concepts. Grouping my students according to their ability opened up a completely new world to many of my students. The students quickly realized how important it was to include everyone and to make sure that every student was responsible for their part.

Drafting Next Steps: The next time I implement this project, I will be sure to find a travel agent that could come and speak with the class on their experience as a travel agent and how they accommodate different budgets. I would keep the silent debate at the beginning of the lesson but I would add other communication forms so all students could voice their opinions in a non-verbal way. I would make sure that my dream vacation would not influence in anyway their dream vacation. I want to be able to step back and only guide them when necessary. 

Kristi Winslow - Student Agency

To build our students agency we can provide them with meaningful and relevant activities, which are driven. This will allow students voice and choice in how they are learning.  In the classroom we need to assist students when choosing their direction, students should know their voices and choices are an important part of the learning process, as long as they have an end goal in mind.  Keeping activities relevant will ensure our students are constantly engaged in what they are learning, due to them being a part of the planning process.  Students become invested in their own growth. 

                After reviewing the student agency chart there are topics that I could implement more in my own classroom including; seek feedback, impact self and community, build confidence, and find personal relevance.

Seek Feedback: When working on major assignments, as a teacher I need to provide more opportunities for peer revision and feedback.  I believe this would be beneficial for my students, for them to see their peers work and provide them with suggestions and tell what they should keep or make better. 

Impact Self and Community: Since a majority of my students comes from low socioeconomic backgrounds, I want to focus on getting to know their backgrounds in order to provide them with relevant concepts.

Build Confidence: I want to implement tasks, assignments, discussions, etc. that would display individual students’ academic strengths and interests.  I could do this by taking student surveys or before each unit have them tell me their strengths or prior success in that particular content area.

Find Personal Relevance: When building their confidence I can in return find out my students interests.  I can provide them with more choices in their assignments and connect the content to something that is relevant to them as a middle school student, such as a game, acceptance, or friends.  

Kristi Winslow - Video Selfie Reflection

Identifying what’s Important:  

                At the beginning of class, I had my students identify what was most important for them to include into their children’s storybooks.  The most important detail they were able to identify was that, they were to include cell organelles into a story.  They were not to focus on just the definition of cell organelles, but to use the mini lessons on plot and characterization to create creative stories that identify those organelles in analogy form. 

                The students then created a consensus chart.  First on what they believed was the most important to include in their children’s books and then come together as a group and come up with a consensus to share with the class.

Making Connections:

                I think the most difficult part of this particular project is ensuring my students are making connections between what they have learned about cells and what they have learned about creating a storybook.  With most students, I can observe that they understand that they are not just creating a story, but they are focusing on making connections with cell organelles and their analogies in order to teach young students about how a cell functions, but in a way that is interesting to them.  The reason this has been difficult is that I still have a handful of students that are not making the connections on what they are to include in their stories and are very confused on what they are exactly trying to accomplish.  I have many that, want to give pictures of organelles and their definitions, and are confused on how they can create what they know into a story. 

Incorporating Contextual Knowledge:

                I used what I know about my students and their different ability levels to place them into groups when coming up with a consensus on what they are needing to include in their books.  To ensure students were seeing ideas that they may not have thought about or thought is important to include.  The reason I had them in groups of different abilities for this protocol, is because they were able to choose their partners for the final project and I wanted to ensure each student had a variety of ideas to be the most successful as they could be. 

Next Steps:

                I feel for the first time trying this protocol, I believe my students did quite well.  Once we started and I explained exactly what it was I wanted them to do and gave examples, they were able to grasp the concept of what they were supposed to do.  In the future, I want to strive not to give so much input into what they need to do.  The whole idea of PBL is for them to learn to think and do on their own with teacher guidance.  I do not want to influence their thoughts by giving ideas and make them think that what they think is not important, because there are sometimes that they say things that I did not even think of, and they tend to have some great ideas.