Genius Hour and Community Involvement

When I first thought about trying Genius Hour in my classroom, I thought, "Ok, I can do this and I'll just keep this within my four walls.  That way, if it doesn't work, no one will need to know."  How many teachers think this way when trying new things? Well, that thought lasted all of 15 minutes for me!  I am a teacher who wants learn from my mistakes.

Well, now I've really opened it up!  I've invited many people from the district and the community to come and help us with our Genius Hour projects.  So far I have a student going to the high school to weld with the instructor (which I will video tape for him and Periscope), an instructor from a local business called, The Paint Factory to work with two students to do acrylic painting, and a teacher from the district who is a master gardener to come and plant container gardens with two students. We've invited a technology specialist from the district to come and build a car from a recycled pop bottle, but we haven't heard back yet (we invited him on Friday afternoon), and we are sending emails on Monday to two local business to help with the green screen work (I have 3 students who are working on DoInk projects).  We will email parents to ask who can come and work with studetns who are working on sewing (four students, and two of them are challenging projects!).  If I can't get parents to help, I will ask the Middle School and High School teachers and students for help.  My final emails I'm working on are to a professional football player to ask if we could Skype for 10-15 minutes with questions they receive ahead of time.  Wish us luck!!!

My purpose of blogging about Genius Hour is simple: 

• Try Genius Hour, and think BIG!!  
• Get the help you need to make it all work.  
• You definitely want extra hands in your classroom when you are doing Genius Hour in primary grades.
• Video as much as you can, or ask someone else to come in and video it for you.  It is awesome to go back and see their excitement and watch their learning happen!

By the way, when I was at Walmart, explaining to the employee cutting all my fabric what it was for, he was LIT UP!  He kept saying, "Why couldn't I have had you when I was in first grade.  I would have loved to learn about things I was interested in!"  

FIND THAT PASSION, PEOPLE!!!! :)

Shopping For Genius Hour Projects

Over the past week, I spent several hours shopping for my students' Genius Hour projects.  How did I know what to get them?  Here what I did:
1. The students had written letter to the stores asking for donations (March)
2. After we were given gift cards (whoop-whoop!!!!) from Target and Walmart, I went to the stores and took pictures of the fabric bolts, seeds and pots so the kids could look through my photos and make choices of their own.
3. I returned to the stores and made the purchase.  Yes, there were glitches.  Some of the fabrics weren't the right kind, knit vs. broadcloth, Thomas the Train blocks that LOOKED like Legos in the pictures.  Some of the Legos were sold out when I got tot the store (we had made choices from Target online).  Luckily I had parents who called me back while I was at the store and helped me fine tune my purchases.
4. I had to make some purchases online.  For example, several of my students wanted to research animals and football, and we did not have books available for the specific needs.  Because Target has a fantastic online book selection, I was able to order all four of the requests of my students.

On Friday for our Genius hour time, I had my students use Seesaw to talk about their projects, and the materials they've received so far.  Some items are still arriving, and one little sweetie will have an experience with a project, so no items will be in our classroom ahead of time.  Here's a link to his Seesaw post:https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_item?item_id=item.a8795557-5c90-484b-9147-979bb36d852c&share_token=ZUzuWX87Q0mnbk4kNvrIfQ&mode=share

Here's another post from a student who will be planting seeds.  We researched several variety of flower seeds before she settled on her final two.  She's SO excited!
 https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_item?item_id=item.9ba8136e-131c-4938-b95f-53a3e26869f1&share_token=eSe1OakiRvugVAbvRWC5vA&mode=share

Here's a link to a video another student made about his Genius Project.  He is going to make a Minion movie using DoInk.  I've got a high school student who taught him how to use the app this past week so he can begin his work.  https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_item?item_id=item.36322f93-5c61-4c2f-99f2-aa1d5e41f2f6&share_token=FNwKTE9dRDWmjDQUSTo59w&mode=share

I will post in a little bit another exciting addition to our classroom Genius Hour, which I am thrilled with the reception in the community!! Stay tuned!!