Genius Hour: The Adventure Begins!

I am BEYOND excited to share with you something we're adding to our weekly routine! 

After reading about Genius Hour all over Pinterest and various teaching blogs, I was hooked; it encompasses so much of what I love about teaching! Genius Hour is based on Google's 20% policy, where Google gives their employees 20% of their work time to focus on their own projects. The thought behind this is that if employees are passionate about what they're working on, productivity will improve. If the rumors are true, Google was right- amazing resources we all know and use (Gmail, anyone?) have come out of this initiative! In the classroom, Genius Hour is a time given to students, usually about an hour each week, to focus on their own Passion Projects, exploring and investigating topics that fascinate them.  

In both undergraduate and graduate school, we were asked to write our 'Philosophy of Education.' I remember researching all different theories and ideas, but what stuck with me most were two quotes:

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge." Albert Einstein

"The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards." Anatole France

In my mind, those two ideas were going to guide my teaching, and that is still my hope and the words that guide me. Above all else, I hope students leave my classroom loving to learn. My long-winded point here is that I believe Genius Hour does just that; it involves students in learning in a meaningful, exciting, authentic way. Passion Projects engage students in their own curiosity, drawn in by their desire to know more. 

Anyways, enough chatter, and onto Room 213's first Genius Hour!

Sometimes my excitement has unfortunate consequences and I'm unable to keep secrets. It's not so bad; I can keep those of others, but never my own! Long story short (something new for me), I blabbed about Genius Hour a few weeks earlier than I intended. Their reactions were amazing, and their enthusiasm infectious! Even though I accidentally spilled the beans back in December, I treated our first 'official' Genius Hour like it was truly our first. 

We began our session by watching Kid President's hilariously inspiring 'Pep Talk,' and talked about what Kid President's message for us was. Our take away: never give up, keep trying, make the world awesome, do something! I told them that we were going to be starting something extra awesome in our class, and showed a quick PowerPoint introducing the idea of Genius Hour- their reactions were everything I could have hoped for-- there was actual cheering! Needless to say, the questions were ENDLESS! They wanted to know everything: Could they work with a partner (no)? When would we do it (Friday afternoons)? When were projects due (we'll see)? Could it be about Pokemon (depends...)? Honestly, I didn't have answers for all of their questions yet- as it's my first time with Passion Projects too, I want to see how this one goes and let it evolve naturally!

After the PowerPoint, we went through the guidelines for the project.

Many already knew what they wanted to study, and nearly everyone surprised me. I had them go through a brainstorming activity, where they thought about what they loved doing, learning about, and wished they knew more about. The idea is still very foreign to them, and I think that they don't quite believe me that they can do their projects on anything they want as long as it is guided by a question, is researched, and presented. If they finished during our hour they could move on to submitting a formal proposal, convincing me that they should be given class time to work on their projects. I also had everyone, even if they finished, take their brainstorms and proposals home to talk over with their parents.

I love how focused and excited everyone was! One of my boys is very new to English (he moved from Korea this past summer), and though we spend a lot of time working one-on-one, and he goes to ELL lessons each day, I still worry that he isn't picking up on what we're doing always. Luckily, one of my girls is also from Korea and a complete rockstar- she spent half of the time sitting with him, going back and forth between Korean and English, helping him understand the project, and working with him to create a mini-dictionary for his topic (words on his list included leopard, leopards, cubs, hunter, and hunting)... in addition to being fantastic to see students helping other students, it was also a great lesson in plurals/nouns/verbs for him! Woohoo!

Anyways, I am PUMPED and hope that my students find a topic that they're as passionate about as I am about Genius Hour! You can find all of the materials I am using in my Genius Hour: Explore Your Passions! packet on Teachers-Pay-Teachers. 

My students added their inquiry questions to the heater/board (I'm out of bulletin board space!) as they had their ideas
approved. There are still a number who need to finalize their ideas! I'll post a list of our questions next week :)