Genius Hour = AMAZING

Oh Boy! I know I can have high expectations and can sometimes have a hard time relinquishing control in my classroom, but with genius hour I gave a bit of instruction and then GOT OUT OF THE WAY. 

No really, this genius hour idea solidified the fact that giving students choice is a mighty powerful way to instill a desire to learn. On average, absences dropped by 1/3 on Fridays when genius hour took place. Students would come in and get right to work on researching, creating, or blogging. There was never a need to tell students to get on task. Once we started blogging, our class community took off and before I knew it students were helping each other with problem solving setbacks, working out an idea and affirming the work of their peers.

As a recap, I held Genius Hour every Friday during my Language Arts class, starting January 17 and ending April 11. I instructed, through mini-lessons, about 5 times (researching, how to borrow others' information, how to blog, how to create an engaging presentation), leaving the rest of the time for students to work (see my initial steps here). Not only did each student learn about their topic, but then the learning became exponential as students gave their presentations. I found myself learning along with my classes as well. There are definitely tweaks that need to be made, but for our first crack with this type of learning opportunity, it was an absolute win. I've listed a few of the topics and tools my students used to complete their project below.

A few of the topics:

• how to design a car
• creating websites
• how regeneration works
• how waterproof materials work
• learning the fictional language from Dr. Who
• learning Italian
• how light affects taking photos
• how to get a job at google
• what dreams mean
• how to tell if people are lying
• the history of tap and how to dance a few steps
• how different kinds of flour change the taste of a cookie
• how to write a children's book
• inventing a new game
• how a crane works

A few of the tools used:

• google presentation
• Prezi
• imovie
• Scratch
• google forms
• google sites
• Codecademy
• Appsbar
• Xcode
• Playmycode
• Unity 3d

The most interesting part of watching 160 students present their projects was that only a handful of topics were repeated. I was actually surprised that there were so many different interests in my students. 

Students doing exercises from a presentation on teen healthy eating and exercise.

Student explains how a crane operates via illustration and model he made.

Students learning how to code with paper cups during a presentation on what code is.

Volunteers coming up to the computer to play a game designed by the presenter.

Student explains what stop motion is before showing us the video she created.

In the end, I did not grade the final presentation because I wanted students to not fear failure, and some projects did fail. In those cases, I talked with the students to help them glean the lessons that were learned and advised them on how to present their failure as a learning opportunity. After all, if someone else fails, then you now know how not to do it, right? Because the final product was not being graded, students felt comfortable with sharing their failure. Students were only graded on the basics of presenting (eye contact & voice level) and proving they did research (1-2 slides of information learned & work cited).

At the end of the day, everyone had fun, learned a few things and realized that learning can be fun and interesting. Students thanked me often for giving them this opportunity and now that I have seen the power of choice, I am now working on restructuring what I do in the classroom to help promote the love of learning.

In the future, I plan to give explicit instruction on creating a presentation and model several ways to present. It's important that students know how to convey ideas in an engaging way. I also want to conference more with each student through the whole process. Finally, I need to do a better job communicating with parents. Because I didn't really know what I was getting into and mostly let it unfold as we went, I didn't quite know how to convey that to my parents. Next year, this will be the first thing I do. I am hoping to tap into my parents as possible mentors for projects. My ultimate goal for genius hour is to connect with the community. I would love to see students working with a member of the community that can help them learn their topic. For instance, I had a student learn about stockbroking. It would have been great to find a member of the community that could have given this particular student some insight into the reality of stockbroking, thus enhancing the learning experience and bringing it into the real world. 

Now the questions are...

How do I always give my students these kinds of learning opportunities?

How do I tailor an assessment system that makes these learning opportunities meaningful and showcases skills and content learned?

and

How do I convey the importance of this kind of learning to my parents, colleagues and administrators?


Genius Hour has proven to me that this is what my classroom needs to look like every day. I have begun a journey to transform the learning that takes place in my classroom. It can only get better from here.