Aside from 3rd period, which fell a little behind due to testing, etc., today was the last day of presentations for 4th, 5th, and 6th periods. After the presentations, we took a look into the future…
Genius hour! This is the name of what will be our rest-of-the-semester project. The students have already been introduced to the concept on more than one occasion and today had the opportunity to see some examples of how some finished Genius Hour projects would look. All of the examples we saw are included in today’s PowerPoint (see below), but some of my favorites are featured below.
So what is Genius Hour again?
Genius Hour is where students are provided with roughly 20% free class time to focus on a topic of their own choosing. For this class, I do not know the exact percentage of time we will spend. We will start with a kickoff week during Conference Week (next week, October 20th-24th, 2014) and will revisit it with free time in class for the students to continue their individualized studies every-other-week. The details and guidelines will be presented to the students on Monday. That said, here are some examples of what other students have done in their Genius Hour explorations:
One young lady chose to write a book and then published it on Google Docs.
Another student sought to find out why it is so hard to solve a Rubik’s Cube to eventually solve it and found this video:
One student opted to show the process in which she learned how to sew a stuffed bunny:
Finally another student decided to demonstrate proper horse etiquette as seen here:
Homework:
- Read for 60 minutes.
- Begin thinking about a prospective Genius Hour topic to explore.
PowerPoint:
