Three years ago, my then-current PLC decided that we would make a go at Genius Hour projects with our sixth grade Social Studies students. There were plenty of resources to get us started, but we created many documents ourselves. Each of us went about introducing the project in different ways, as well as what we required and when. Overall, I felt that while it was A TON of work on my end, my students enjoyed themselves and impressed even themselves. This year I am teaching a Literacy and Media Technology class to 6th-8th graders and decided Genius Hour would be a great way to finish out our year together. Unfortunately, I can not locate many of the documents I used for instruction (how did I function before Google Drive?). I also forget how I went about introducing the topic to my students other than the standard Genius Hour video. So...I am starting from scratch. I headed to the Internet and discovered that there is an insane amount of valuable resources. I started with @hughtheteacher's blog.
How does creativity work?
To get my students thinking about creativity, I opened up a back channel in Today's Meet and asked the question, "How does creativity work?" While there were some answers that were questionable (typical in an anonymous-type setting), some of the responses were brilliant. Sadly, I did not think to save their responses and the room has expired. Regardless, it got the juices flowing. @hughtheteacher includes a video on his website showing what happens when you give students time to create.
How does creativity work?
To get my students thinking about creativity, I opened up a back channel in Today's Meet and asked the question, "How does creativity work?" While there were some answers that were questionable (typical in an anonymous-type setting), some of the responses were brilliant. Sadly, I did not think to save their responses and the room has expired. Regardless, it got the juices flowing. @hughtheteacher includes a video on his website showing what happens when you give students time to create.
While I did not actually show this video, I did re-enact the activity with my students. As in the video, the majority of them drew clocks with the initial 20 seconds. When I gave them 10 minutes and buckets of colors, they were as creative as groups of 12-14 year olds can be. Following the activity, I probed for what enabled them to be more creative. "Materials," then, "more time!" Yes! Given copious amounts of time, there is so much we can do. Without the constraints of time, what would you do? What would you study? Would you do something for yourself? Your students? Your family? Create a solution to a world problem?
What is creativity?
The next day's lesson began with giving my students the following assignment: Create a slide showing something or someone creative. The goal of this was to show that each person has their own idea of what inspires them. My students had about five minutes for this activity, and then we went through the slide show together. There were some laughs, but many ooohs and aaahs. One students said, "There are so many different ways to be creative, I never thought about it before."
What is creativity?
The next day's lesson began with giving my students the following assignment: Create a slide showing something or someone creative. The goal of this was to show that each person has their own idea of what inspires them. My students had about five minutes for this activity, and then we went through the slide show together. There were some laughs, but many ooohs and aaahs. One students said, "There are so many different ways to be creative, I never thought about it before."
Creativity can be used to solve problems
I showed the following video to portray the design thinking that people often use when presented with a problem. The conversation that followed was valuable. Actually, the conversation with my seventh graders was more fruitful than with the eighth graders. For some reason, the 8th graders were shut down; they did not want to participate. Their body language and non-responsiveness told me that they were bored. They didn't see where I was going with all this talk of "creativity" and just wanted to get to the point. The seventh graders, though? In response to my question, "What thoughts were going through your head when you saw this?" they answered: "inspiring," "motivating," "surprising," "hard-working." "They had a problem and they worked really hard, and they solved it. And they were just kids!" Bingo!
It takes courage to be creative
I showed one last video to my students on this day of pre-Genius Hour activities. Again, thank you @hughtheteacher, for the queue of videos. It does take courage to be creative. You might fail. You might be embarrassed. You also might just change the world.
I showed one last video to my students on this day of pre-Genius Hour activities. Again, thank you @hughtheteacher, for the queue of videos. It does take courage to be creative. You might fail. You might be embarrassed. You also might just change the world.
Persevere.
If Kid President can have this much fun with his 70+ broken bones, we can spend 35 minutes each day investigating a subject that we love. We're only here for a finite amount of time, so let's spend it productively. I show the following video to show my students that life is for dancing, as "The Robster" proves to us. Do what makes you smile. If a teacher is giving you the opportunity to study WHATEVER you want, TAKE IT and run with it.
If Kid President can have this much fun with his 70+ broken bones, we can spend 35 minutes each day investigating a subject that we love. We're only here for a finite amount of time, so let's spend it productively. I show the following video to show my students that life is for dancing, as "The Robster" proves to us. Do what makes you smile. If a teacher is giving you the opportunity to study WHATEVER you want, TAKE IT and run with it.
Finally!
Students are ready to learn what they're going to spend their time doing over the next few weeks.
Students are ready to learn what they're going to spend their time doing over the next few weeks.
Essential Question Maker
Create a Blog
More info to come here later. In the meantime, I found the first blog site to be non-intuitive for my students. Last Saturday, I played around with my blog and found in difficult and annoying. I said to myself, "I wish Weebly had student blogs." After taking a moment to check, I heard church bells ringing in my ears when I discovered that they do! After spending two class periods last week getting my students set up in the original blog host, today I switched them over to the Weebly students accounts. You can do this at www.students.weebly.com. On my to-do list is to create screencasts on how to set up a Student account, change the theme and layout, and add an About Me page.
Share your blog with me
I will have my students complete a Google Form to submit their essential question, blog URL, and interest level in anticipation of their Genius Hour project. I will then take the Sheet provided by Forms and share it with my students, so that they can have access to each other's blogs with ease. They will be commenting on each other's blogs to motivate each other to write more. We always write more when we're writing for a real audience.
Start Researching
Each of my students have a copy of this template for note-taking. I have access to their documents from within Google Classroom, therefore it will be easy to see what kind of progress is being made. I can see where students are struggling with note-taking skills, textual evidence, summarization, paraphrasing, etc. At that point, I will be able to conference with each student to guide them in the right direction.
More to come!