Lessons Learned in Genius Hour Studies

Hello! Well, I was super excited to have Genius Hour with my students this last Friday.  I had loaded a video for each of them into their Seesaw account.  Yes, it was a bit time consuming, but SO worth it! I found the videos on YouTube, copied and pasted the link into SafeshareTv, and then into each student's Seesaw Genius Hour folder.  I love SafeshareTV, because that's all the kids can see - what I put there.  No links, no side bar graphics, etc. This is what my students saw when they logged in:

Some of the animals my students were researching were more difficult to find videos than others.  But that was the least of my problems :)

I did not think I would have WiFi issues.  We were the only class in first grade, and very likely the only ones using WiFi in our building (10 classes of 1st grade and 9 classes of kindergarten).  The time of day we do Genius Hour is between 2:00-3:00 on Fridays.  The high school and the middle school are done at 2:20.  The bandwidth should have been pretty open.  BUT.... only about 1/2 of my kids could get their videos to load.  I did eventually get everyone able to view his or her video, but it took until 3:05 - time to pack up to go home - before we got everyone done! INSERT SAD FACE HERE!!
Lessons learned - always lessons learned!
1. Plan on having around half of the students go online at a time.  The other half of the students can be researching with books, looking for pictures to add to their work, drawing features, or working on another project.
2. Pre-teach a few students how to help problem-solve basic problems which may come up.  For example, how to access the file (some forget how to find their video, and end up watching someone else's video).  This will save you lots of time, and help your students feel empowered!!
3. Teach two students a new technology tool, and have them teach two students, and so on... Again, empower, empower, empower!  You do not have 21 brains, 21 mouths and 42 hands to help them all in the time frame they want.  I've been there! This technique will limit the number of questions you will get tenfold!  This last Friday, I used this technique to teach my students how to take screenshots, and how to upload the photo to Seesaw.  It took me 3 minutes to teach two students.  Like wild fire, they taught the class and told others to teach someone else after they'd practiced it.  Will they have it perfect? Not everyone.  Will they remember it the next time they need it? Most will, but I will have to remind a few.
I will make a book of experts for each of the apps.  The kids can see who the "Go To" kids are for each app.  Eventually, we will be able to offer our expertise as  "Kid Tech Team" for our building, helping other classrooms when needed and asked.
4. Here are some examples of the QR code helpers I use, the guides my students use (if they want)for animal research, and some "live" Genius Hour projects in progress.  We will work 1 more time researching before we put our research into a presentation, using Shadow Puppet Edu.  You'll notice in my students' journals that they've cited (or it was on a previous page I didn't photograph) the book they used for their research.  I've made it very clear, even at the first grade level, the importance of citing work.  It may not be APA format, however, lol!

These are the supplies we use for our animal research Genius Hour projects, in addition to library books and iPads.  We will also use Chromebooks to research, with the same websites bookmarked on the toolbar.''

  

All of my students listed the facts they knew about their animal first, before they picked a book from the library.   This student listed all he knew about cardinals first on the paper, then as he learned NEW facts, he added them onto post-it notes.  I modeled this procedure for them using bats as an animal to research.  I wrapped up the research phase last week, and will model how to make a presentation in Shadow Puppet next week.
Shadow Puppet is not the only way my students can present their learning, but for their first project, I want all of my students to learn one complete process the same.  After this Genius Hour project is complete and everyone has shared his or her project with the class, I will model different ways to share projects - I'll save that for a different blog post! :)

Other examples of my students' projects.
This is my go to for great animal researching!  I have the students bend the paper back, so only 1 QR code shows at once.  You just need to have a QR reader loaded on your device.  I have QRJump on the iPads.  There is a Chromebook extension for a QR code reader if you use Chromebooks, and QR readers are available on android platforms as well.

The next pages are from a great friend and master teacher, Sabrina Peterson.  She shared them with us when she worked in our school a couple of years ago.  I miss her so much!!

I've used these pages with my first graders for 3 years, but usually in May.  It's a bit hard for many of them to read all of it this time of year though.  I made it optional, and not too many used it.

Reflection is always important for teachers to do. After each lesson I do this - with the students and again after they are gone.  I asked them about the problems we had, and if there were any things we learned from our frustrations.  One of my kiddos said, "It's ok, Mrs. Heikes.  Sometimes it's like our Smart Board.  It's an ornery board.  So we just had ornery iPads today."  Patience is a virtue!  Bless his heart!! We learn from each other every single day!

Genius Hour Resources

I recently did a webinar with the my friend, Angela Gadtke from @Seesaw.  We talked about how awesome Seesaw is to use with Genius Hour.  We've both taught Genius Hour in primary grades (Angela in kindergarten and myself in first grade) this past year.  During the webinar, someone asked what my favorite websites were to use to support my students' researching.  I have to be honest, I was not prepared for the question, and after a 12 hour day, and 2 weeks of recovering from pneumonia, I was shot.
So, I am posting my favorite sources tonight! :)

If you have students researching animals, here are my top 3 choices:
National Geographics - Kids

A-Z Animals

San Diego Zoo for Kids

If your students are looking for projects to make, here are a few sites:
DIY - for kids

Instructables

You Tube -You may find videos for your students yourself, but remember to put it into SafeShareTV for them to view safely.

I will post a few other resources my students are trying out for me - after we use them.  We are trying a more guided Genius Hour project for our first project this year, so my students know HOW and WHAT to report and share.  I will post samples of their work this next week, as they are working on their projects on Monday.  They are very anxiously waiting for Monday to come!  They were able to choose any animal to research.  I modeled the process with bats.  We wrote on post-it notes (thank you, 3M!!!) and put our notes in columns - CAN, ARE, HAVE.  As we learned NEW information through reading books, we added new post-it notes with the info. listed, but the post-it notes were of a different color.  This helps my students visually see we learn new information. Next week we will look at our notes and see if some of our original ideas of bats were true or false.  If the notes were false, they will be eliminated.

At the end of each working session, I will have my students take a picture of their journals and talk about what they learned that particular day, and what their next step would be.  This is something I was missing last year, and I learned from Angela.  Webinars, Twitter chats and other blogs are great ways to learn from each other!
Keep learning and keep moving forward! :D