3..2..1..Genius Hour Launch

All during winter break, I researched, thought, and tried to plan what my genius hour would look like for my 7th grade Language Arts students. I perused some live binder collections like Joy Kirr's and Mike Stein's, that had been tweeted out on twitter. Of course I googled genius hour, 20% time, and passion projects in search of any information that would help me figure out how I would present the concept and support the learning, all without grading much of it. I started reading Drive, by Daniel Pink, and really thinking about motivation. There is actually a ton of information out there now, if you look for it. So many educators have latched on to this idea of allowing students to learn for learning's sake, not just because of some standard. Finally, I said, "Enough! We're doing this!" and promptly threw myself and my students into the genius hour rocket and lifted off.

I did make sure I knew what I hoped to accomplish, standards wise, and what the students' end product would be. Genius hour was going to have 3 learning goals: basic research skills (website evaluation, search tools, documenting sources), presentation skills (listening, speaking and sharing knowledge doesn't necessarily mean that it should be in a powerpoint), and that learning is fun. I'll admit that this is sometimes the stuff that doesn't get explicitly taught in my room, maybe mentioned and practiced a bit, but my goal with genius hour was about giving students time to learn what they wanted (motivation) and weave in skills that they will use heavily in the real world, research and presentation skills. I decided to do this through mini-lessons. I never wanted to take the whole hour for instruction and practice, as I was afraid that students would think that this was just another thing the teacher was doing to them. It was imperative that students bought in and saw this as an opportunity to do something they probably have never done in school...have complete autonomy to study any subject of their choice.

The particulars I decided on were the following:

• Every Friday (20% of their LA time)
• Begin Friday, January 17
• Presentations - Friday, April 7 & April 11

January 17 came and I was nervous to say the least. I wasn't sure if students would be into this; my group this year is big into being told what to do. Below is what we did for the first 4 Fridays as a way to establish genius hour.

Day 1 - Introduction

This was a minimum day, so I had 30 minutes to introduce the idea. I first showed them Chris Kesler's video.

Then showed this...

The looks on my students' faces were absolutely priceless. I forgot to tell you that I had been dropping hints at genius hour since before winter break, so I definitely had some intrigue going on. So after watching these videos, I asked them what genius hour was and some brave souls nailed it right on the head and those were the students that were excited. Everyone else was cautious, they didn't believe their teacher would allow something like this. Even after I spent the rest of the class period explaining, so many walked out of my room in shock, literally.

Day 2 - Brainstorm Day

Using a brainstorm sheet from Mike Stein's livebinder, students took about 20 minutes to just sit and think. Many had some difficulty and I had to walk around, asking questions as a way to help draw ideas out of them. We discussed what made a good driving question for our project, discussing questions that were too broad or too narrow. I had students then add to our bad ideas chart on the floor so that we could get all of those out of our system. So, questions like, "How do you make a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich?" and "How can I make the world believe that Justin Bieber should be president?" are not genius hour worthy driving questions. The class period culminated with students writing their driving question at the bottom of their brainstorming chart.

Day 3 - Initial Research
The first 20 minutes were used to teach a mini-lesson on evaluating websites. I went over the REAL strategy, based on the work of Alan November in Web Literacy for Educators, and we evaluated 2 websites side-by-side, one credible and one not credible, using this checklist. 

Students then got 20 minutes to do some initial research. Students created a doc in their google drives to take notes as they researched. They had the option of tweaking their driving question if their research quickly gave them an answer, or if they found that their question wasn't really what they wanted to do. 

Day 4 - Pitch Day
Borrowing an idea from Kevin Brookhouser, students would pitch their genius hour project to me. They were going to sell me the idea that they had a clear picture of what they were learning, how they were going to learn it, and how they would present their learning. 

The day before, I was out of the classroom, so I made a tutorial that students watched (see below and don't laugh) and they filled out a planning guide for their own pitch.

Students then had the rest of the class period to practice their 30 second project pitch.

On the actual pitch day, students came to me to pitch (graded on eye contact and voice) and those that were not pitching were doing research. They evaluated 1 website, using the checklist (graded for accuracy), as a way to be held accountable for the day's work and as a way to practice evaluating the credibility of websites. I was able to hear all of my students. Some classes were as large as 34, but since they only had 30 seconds, I was able to power through all of them. After some pitches, I did have to ask questions to clarify and some students had to tweak their planning guides. But, for the most part, 99% of my students understood exactly what they wanted to learn and how they would go about learning it. There will need to be more discussion about the different modes of presentation. I don't think they quite understand that their presentations can be interactive and that is what we will work on in the coming weeks.

After 4 weeks of Genius Hour Fridays, I am excited to see what my students will accomplish and so thankful I chose to dive in and try something new. Look for future posts on our genius hour journey, coming soon.