Genius Hour - Round 6

This week was very interesting. Students really started to think about their topics. I had 3 students approach me about changing their topics. While they were very excited about the topics, they realized through their research that some of them may have been not been going in the direction they had hoped for. I thought this was great! I was thrilled to see them thinking deeply about their topics and the direction they wanted to go with them.

To start Genius Hour, we read Going Places by Peter and Paul Reynolds. The kids really enjoyed this book, as they have all of our Genius Hour read alouds thus far.

Students got right to work researching and I began pulling them over to conference. Conferencing provided great one on one time that allowed me to teach the students where they are at and what they needed to learn from me at that time. For example, one student wants to conduct an interview. This is probably the hardest topic for me to wrap my head around out of all of the topics in our class. However, the little girls is SO EXCITED - that was the goal! We conferenced and decided that she would begin researching good interview questions and jotting them down. She wants to interview Katy Perry. We posted on her FB page and also sent her a Tweet from our class Twitter account. Fingers crossed - please reply Katy Perry!

My daughter attends a project based learning charter school in our district. She works within 6 week project cycles. During each cycle she is expected to research 60 facts on her topic from a variety of resources. This got me thinking about Genius Hour....when could students start working on their projects? I had not set any guidelines for them. Should I have? I decided to tell them that they needed at least 5 facts about their topic to start. We will evaluate after they have obtained 5 facts whether or not they should continue on researching.

Genius Hour 5

This week, we moved to the Library Research Center for a change of scenery. Our amazing Library Director, Ms. Davis, read us Anything is Possible by Giulia Belloni. The kids love listening to picture books during Genius Hour. Reading these inspirational books has made me realize that I do not read aloud to my class enough and am going to make time to do it more.

This week, was very eye opening to me, as I saw the powering of conferencing with individuals first hand. We came to the Library Research Center for a change of scenery and to take advantage of Ms. Davis' expertise in online Databases. She showed us how to use them and we went to work. Many kids had difficulty finding information about their topic in the databases. We practiced searching for related things. Students then went on to conduct more online searches using Google.

I encouraged students to take notes on anything exciting they found. As I walked around and checked on students' progress, I started jotting down notes that they dictated to me. I realized that this was something we would need to work on - note taking. Thus far, I had modeled it at the beginning of every Genius Hour class and throughout the week when we were working on other subjects. It was something that students struggled with and we would need to continue to practice.

I enjoyed conferencing and felt that it was extremely beneficial to students and so much more than just monitoring their progress. I was able to work one on one with students and guide them in their note taking and in generating questions. Side note - this month I participated in the #geniushour Twitter chat. Something I will be investigating is rightquestion.org to search for resources to help me ask thought provoking questions that encourage students to continue questioning. I will also be creating a form to track conferences.

We also discussed our experts. It was interesting to me that many students did not think past their families. I encouraged them to think BIG! We have the world at our fingertips via technology. It doesn't hurt to try, right? As one of my friends and colleagues says, "You won't receive unless you ask!"

Plan of attack for week 6: continue researching, conferencing, and generating lists of experts to contact.

*On conference sheet - include "expert" and "final project ideas".