Professional Inquiry Project- GENIUS HOUR!

Genius Hour

For my professional inquiry project, I wanted to look deeper into genius hour. From years of teaching and what I've learned in this class, I know that student lead inquiry is in important aspect in the classroom. I wanted to include more student based learning into my classroom, but wasn't sure where to start. It seems daunting to give control over to the students- what will that look like and how can I form it into something productive? In comes genius hour. Through my readings and research on genius hour, I am gaining a better understanding of how to slowly incorporate student lead learning. I am excited to try out genius hour in my class and hope that it allows students to feel heard, respected and excited about school!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Essential Question

The essential question I am investigating is "How might we use technology to enhance real world, collaborative, learner centered education?"

Genius Hour is all about allowing learners to use technology and other sources to explore learner centered questions. The learner centered questions are based upon real world problems, projects or questions that learners have. Learners are using their wonders about the world to dive deeper into their interests. Technology is a means of learning more about their question. Students can use technology to research credible sources, conduct interviews via email/video conference with experts on their topic and to create their final presentations. Students are collaborating with peers, teachers and the outside world during their genius hour. They are sharing ideas with teachers, providing and receiving feedback from peers and sharing their final projects with an audience.

Course Outcomes

The two course outcomes I am demonstrating proficiency with are:

• Plan for educational experience (of k-12 students or adult learners) that demonstrates the ability to use educational technology, sound educational philosophy and plan for local context.      

This connects to my project because I am planning for students to use educational technology in a way that is purposeful for them. They will be using technology to explore real world problems and scenarios. Students will be using technology to drive their education in a way that they have not yet done. I am learning right along with them. We will be discovering tools, tricks and focusing on responsible technology use.               
                    

• Demonstrating fluency with new educational tools and articulate the affordances and constraints of such tools to support educational practice.

This relates to my project because through genius hour, I am learning new educational tools. Students will be using different technology tools to show and demonstrate their knowledge and present their final projects. Through this, I will be exposed to many new technologies and begin to develop fluency with them and know if they are the right fit moving forward to use again.

Scholarly Articles from OneSearch

• Matteson, A. (2016). It's genius. School Library Journal, 62(10), 36. Retrieved from https://library.umaine.edu/auth/EZproxy/test/authej.asp?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1825616004?accountid=14583

I really enjoyed this article, as it mentions some of the reasons behind implementing a genius hour. The article stresses the importance that genius hour is a time in which students are working on their own self driven learning goals, not work that is driven by standards, rubrics and exams. This is a time for students to explore and learn more about what they love. It is a time for students to gain support from peers and teachers and learn to accept failure as an important part of learning. This article supports that there is not right way or right time to implement this- you can make it work for your classroom. A focus of this article is making students comfortable with failure. They actually suggest that you spend a chunk of time creating a culture of learning that involves finding fun in failure before embarking on genius hour independent projects. The recipe for success in this article includes: Autonomy, mastery, and purpose and stresses the importance that students are working on a project of their choosing that is rooted in real life problems. 

• West, J.M. & Roberts, K.L. (2016). Caught Up in Curiosity: Genius Hour in the Kindergarten Classroom. The Reading Teacher, 70( 2), 227– 232. doi: 10.1002/trtr.1497

I wanted to read this article because if genius hour could work in kindergarten, I could definitely make it work in 4th! The beginning of this article speaks to the minimal research of the outcomes of genius hour, but mentions the support for the different components that are included in genius hour. For example, it has strong writing and reading components and has been shown to improve writing quality of younger students. It also uses the gradual release model. The most important ideas behind genius hour center around students having choice and purpose. This makes their learning authentic, meaningful and engaging. The steps recommended from this article for genius hour success are:

Step 1: generate ideas

Step 2: Research:

Step 3: Draft

Step 4: Publish & Present

Here are some wonderful visuals that a teacher used in her kindergarten classroom. These would be helpful for helping students understand what each part of their process could look like.

• Robinson, C. (2018, July). A short guide to Genius Hour makerspaces. Science Scope, 41(9), 18+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A545953230/CSIC?u=maine_orono&sid=CSIC&xid=93335899.

• This article dives into why teachers should include a genius hour into their classroom and how they could go about starting. It's acknowledged that teachers are stressed to meet all of the standards and contents into one year as it is, so how can one find time to incorporate this into their already busy schedules? It refers to Daniel Pink and his thoughts that motivation comes to students when they have autonomy. When students are free to decided what they learn about, they master the content and have purposeful learning. Genius hour also allows for students to master a variety of technology standards and reading/writing. For example, to learn more about their topic, students are engaging in the reading of informational texts. They are also note taking and making connections. The tips from this article for creating a successful genius hour are: 1. Have an endgame in mind, 2. Give students ownership, 3. Get the lay of the land, 4. Recycle, reuse, and ask for help, 5. Showcase student work.

• Will, M. (2019). ‘Genius Hour’ Lets Kids Take Charge. Education Week, 39(12), 20–22.

This This article centered around teachers giving their experiences of genius hour in their classrooms. What I liked best about this article, when searching through all the others was the fact that it talked about what genius hour could look like for younger students at the elementary level. This article was honest about the great parts of genius hour and the harder parts of it. As someone who hasn't used genius hour before, it was extremely helpful to hear from other teachers what experiences for them were. In this article it states that there is no one formula or one way to start genius hour in your room and that you can make it work for you and your students. It was refreshing to hear that you don't have to follow a one size fits all script. The article recommends six steps to use when implementing genius hour: Inspire, wonder, question, learn, share and reflect. If you are looking to connect to specific standards, the article suggests connecting your genius hour project requirements to connect to what students are learning about in the classroom. There is also mention of formulating a good genius hour topic and the importance of teaching your students about thick and thin questions. As for a connection to communication, the article states that speaking and listening skills are a big part of genius hour. Students are expected to present their ideas at certain stages, which requires them to speak and find ways to communicate and for their peers to listen intently and give feedback. 

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Resources

Articles:

https://www.edutopia.org/article/genius-hour-elementary-school

This article would be great for a first time genius hour teacher to read through. It is from the perspective of a teacher and details their experience and suggestions for successful genius hour. It includes time lines for students and teachers, as well as guiding questions to ask students throughout the process. 

https://minds-in-bloom.com/implementing-genius-hour-classroom/

This article is also helpful for those teachers who are just beginning their genius hour exploration. In this reading, it talks about the steps teachers can take to prepare themselves and their students for success. It lists teacher blogs and websites to help generate ideas for you before you start your own genius hour with your class. It emphasized the importance of planning on the teacher end and suggests printing out blank calendars to help pace yourself and your students. This article also has a link to a "thick or think" question

worksheet that is really helpful in ensuring that students develop deep, meaningful questions to investigate. I liked that the author mentioned having the students first pitch their idea to their classmates before beginning their project.

https://www.weareteachers.com/what-is-genius-hour/

This is an excellent resource for teachers. It provides suggested steps for teachers and students to take, as well as provides descriptions of what each step would look like. There are links to instagram pictures centered around genius hour that were helpful visually.

Helpful video for kids

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzjIHD7l2Mc

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rZ5Ga70bP8

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep7k7jeAg-A

Helpful video for teachers

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsW42EzF0sk

Other helpful resources:

• By Kaitlin Barnes @Booksandbeyonce: These resources are helpful for students in the beginning to brainstorm ideas and think of "thick" questions.

  
  
  
  

• What is Genius Hour.  This link provides a great example to use with students that will tell them what genius hour is and give examples of what a project might look like based off of a persons' interests. 

• This Google Drive is a resource that was linked with the video above by Talkin' Chalk on Youtube. In this drive are various resources to help you get started with Genius Hour, as well as resources to use with students in their planning phase. 

• "Thin VS. Thick Questions" By Dara Nicholson 

Proof of Work

To show proof of my work, I decided to make a checklist for students to use to guide their genius hour projects. This shows that I understand the process of genius hour and the different parts that are involved in it.

 

Discussion

My inquiry question supported by professional growth by allowing me to look into something I had heard about a few years ago, but never had the chance to explore further. I have been interested in implementing more of a student led classroom and genius hour seems like the perfect way to start. This project allowed me to dive deeper into student inquiry and read stories about the ways in which this particular activity has been successful. I know that this work improved and changed my teaching because I am already planning on trying it out. This is a new topic and area for me, so to try this out is a big change in my teaching and in my classroom.

I enjoyed having a PLN to communicate with on this project. At times, when you are taking an online course, you can feel disconnected from others. It was helpful to quickly ask and question and receive several responses back. They were helpful in times of my confusion and helped validate that I was on the right path. I had never use Twist before and I wasn't sure how I would like it. I ended up enjoying it because it was in a different place than my emails and other messages. If we had just stuck to an email chain, it could have been easily lost in the mail that comes in daily or hard to follow. Twist had different conversations going at once and the responses were organized and easy to follow.

My next step for this inquiry would to actually implement genius hour into my classroom! We are currently in person learning, but have been told we could move to remote at any time- any most likely will before Thanksgiving break. This information leads me to another next step in my inquiry which is figuring out if this could be a remote activity.