Genius Project - The Beginning of Our Journey

Myself and our amazing Year Five teacher, Claire Cooper (@ClaireCooper014), were recently asked to take on the idea of genius hour with our students. We were both very excited by the idea and started researching it straight away. The first place I looked was under the hashtag #GeniusHour. Through this I found a bunch of educators who had already implemented the idea within their classrooms or schools.

The next step was to set up the Genius Project so that it would be relevant to our students and our school. In years 5 and 6 the students have 1:1 MacBooks and are used to working through Problem Based Tasks in a Contemporary Learning Environment. We needed to take this into account when structuring how we would like them to go about the task. We were also lucky enough to have another three teachers to help us out. This meant that we would be able to break the students up into groups of approximately 10 and have a guidance teacher for each.

Claire and I looked through a range of resources (you will find these at the bottom of this post) and watched this YouTube clip http://youtu.be/NMFQUtHsWhc. We decided that we would set up an Edmodo group for the students to join. Within this group we created small groups for each of the guidance teachers. This way the teachers could share resources for their ten students without the students needing to filter through everything to find what they need.

As a teacher tool, we created a session outline and areas for anecdotal notes through Google Docs. This is a brilliant tool as all five teachers have access to the documents and can edit them on any device.

We started Week One with a Kid President video. If you haven't watch Kid President you need to jump on YouTube now and check him out (A Pep Talk From Kid President). He's gorgeous and shares some really enlightening thoughts. The video we chose to start this session talks about ideas 'leading to awesome' and asks students, 'what will you create to make the world awesome?"

"This is your time.

This is my time.

This is our time."
- Kid President

Students loved this quick clip and had a giggle at some of dance moves. It set the tone for an extremely enjoyable first Genius Project session.

We wanted students to be able to work independently during the session, so we made a range of flipped tasks outlining what was expected. At our school we work through a range of Problem Based Tasks. We use the 21st Century Fluency Project model (@leecrockett). For our first Genius Project we decided that we wanted students to use the Information Fluency model, focusing on the 5 As. These are: Ask, Acquire, Analyse, Apply and Assess. We used EduCreations to create a video for students outlining these steps. EduCreations Clip. Please excuse any mistakes within this clip, I refuse to re-record/film tasks, otherwise I could spend hours trying to make them 'perfect'.


An outline of expected outcomes was displayed on Edmodo for the students to see. Once they had viewed the above clip, they were to continue on to make a MindNode brainstorm. This was saved as a PDF and used as a formal form of assessment.

This year I introduced my Year Six students to blogging and they have loved it!! It was therefore decided that we would create a KidBlog account for each child. This was to be used as a reflection tool at the end of each session. We created a resource explaining how to use KidBlog, one on writing a successful post and one on giving constructive feedback to peers. These were set as flipped tasks over one week. This allowed students time to explore and learn the resources in preparation for the sessions. The only downfall that I have had with KidBlog is that on a free account I can only have 50 memberships. This means that I am the only teacher with access, and therefore need to do all the editing and approvals. It would be great to be able to share this out between the five teachers involved.

Myself and the other teachers involved have a range of ideas that we are going to incorporate into our future Genius Project sessions. These include creating a YouTube channel to upload videos of students working through their tasks, more flipped tasks to prepare students for upcoming sessions and introducing a range of no-tech, low-tech and high-tech resources. 

We explored some of these resources in one of our EduCreations flipped tasks. Students watched this in preparation for the second session, where they began working through the Acquire Stage. 

So far, the Genius Project has been a fantastic experience for all involved. I would encourage all teachers and schools to take this on and allow your students to learn about a topic of their choice. The next #geniushour Twitter chat is on September 4th around 8pm Perth time. Get involved or just tune in to see how people are incorporating this idea into their classrooms around the world. 

Stay tuned for future updates on the Genius Project at Sacred Heart Primary School Highgate (@GabrielleTrinca / @SHPSHighgate). 

www.geniushour.com
http://geniushour.wikispaces.com/
Engage Their Minds - Genius Hour Resources