Last year I read Drive by Daniel Pink and my previous ideas regarding motivation were stretched and new ideas were generated. Last year I gave students opportunities to pursue their passions, but only pertaining to math. This year I wanted to expand it allowing for more content and freedom, hence Genius Hour. I searched the internet and put my questions out in the Twitter world and found some great resources and ideas. You may be asking what is this, below is a great explanation I found from Chris Kesler on his website What is Genius Hour? Genius hour is a movement that allows students to explore their own passions and encourages creativity in the classroom. It provides students a choice in what they learn during a set period of time during school. It’s not easy to determine where the idea was originally created, but there are at least two events that have impacted genius hour. Genius Hour Origins The search-engine giant, Google, allows it’s engineers to spend 20% of their time to work on any pet project that they want. The idea is very simple. Allow people to work on something that interests them, and productivity will go up. Google’s policy has worked so well that it has been said that 50% of Google’s projects have been created during this creative time period. Ever heard of Gmail or Google News? These projects are creations by passionate developers that blossomed from their 20-time projects. Genius Hour in Education The same genius hour principles apply in the classroom as they do in the corporate environment. The teacher provides a set amount of time for the students to work on their passion projects. Students are then challenged to explore something to do a project over that they want to learn about. They spend several weeks researching the topic before they start creating a product that will be shared with the class/school/world. Deadlines are limited and creativity is encouraged. Throughout the process the teacher facilitates the student projects to ensure that they are on task. A goal of every teacher should be to create lifelong learners. Genius hour projects are a huge step towards that goal. The students were so delighted to finally find out what Genius Hour is. I gave one clue a day since the least week and allowed students to guess. They were not expecting to get to learn anything they want. We already have some great, creative, and challenging questions to search for. I'm excited to see where students go on this learning journey.
What is your passion? How are you going to find information about your passion?
21 Comments
sarah
8/16/2013 04:32:01 am
I WILL LIKE TO BE A MOVIE DIRECTOR
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Mrs. K
8/19/2013 03:54:32 am
Sarah,
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sarah
8/20/2013 04:25:39 am
Dear Mrs.K
Mrs. K
8/19/2013 03:48:25 am
My passion is photography. I would like to learn how to make a video of my pictures with music and pop up captions. To find out how to do this I am going to search experts' blogs and try to find video directions either on a website or youtube.
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Joao
8/19/2013 04:42:51 am
I want to search about the 4 best coaches from Europe(I think) and how many they get per year
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Dongkyun
8/19/2013 05:21:18 am
My passion is doing 3d animation. I would want to improve mt animating skills by trying out minecraft animations. Also I want to know how to use video editing softwares, and use them so my animation looks better. To find out how to do all this stuff, I will search youtube for tutorials,lectures, and read how to do them in people's blogs
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Dongkyun
8/19/2013 05:22:24 am
Oops... I typed mt instead of my... Sorry...
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sally
8/19/2013 06:12:10 am
My passion is to cook. I am going to ask my mom or go to a web site.
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Mrs. K
8/21/2013 02:50:34 am
Sally,
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enzo
8/19/2013 07:09:45 am
I willl like to learn how to go intop of the airplane in map called Terminal in the game Call of Duty.
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Manu
8/19/2013 07:14:51 am
I would like to invent a song and then sing it and play it in the guitar!!! I don't know how to play the guitar but I will try.
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olda
8/19/2013 07:21:54 am
I would love to film me training my dogs!
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Gabriel
8/19/2013 07:43:55 am
My passion is horse riding and I want to learn how to do lateral work for example leg-yielding, its a way to trot side-ways
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Gabriel
8/19/2013 07:47:01 am
I forgot to include that I was going to ask my mom for help and look at a book so i can know how to do a leg-yielding
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Mrs. K
8/21/2013 02:52:24 am
Gabriel,
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Soyoun
8/19/2013 08:38:12 am
Dear Mrs.K,
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Alejo
8/19/2013 10:34:57 am
My pation is to buy and collect legos and want to learn how to do good legos videos with animation.I am gonna ask help to my brother to help me.
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Mrs. K
8/21/2013 02:54:32 am
Alejo,
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giovanni
8/20/2013 05:33:12 am
my passion is to craft ,but not just craft anything but a wood car that has a driving steer wheel and also real tires but the car made out o wood
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Matheus
8/20/2013 06:02:45 am
My passion is to do basketball trick shots like "Dude Perfect".
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Matheus
8/20/2013 06:14:01 am
Also I'd like to learn how to make good videos of me doing trick shots. For that I'm going to watch youtube videos and search for websites on google.
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AuthorWelcome to our fifth grade site! We are 5th graders at an international school in Brazil. We use this site as an avenue of communication and to share our learning. Please join us in our learning journey! Class Instagram: @journeywithmrskOur class Social Media Manager takes our Instagram photographs and writes the caption.
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