Genius Hour Update!

Oh, my! I've been absent!! Here's the story... I had rotator cuff surgery in early March.  Ugh.  I NEVER imagined how awful it would be! My doctor said I'd miss two weeks of work.  Ha!  Six weeks later, I tried a valiant effort of full time return.  That lasted a few days.  So I finished the school year with mostly half days.  I've been so blessed to have such wonderful substitutes who truly understand not only my students, but also my my insane schedule and use of technology in my room.  To top it off, the wifi decided to wander away from my room for nearly six weeks, during the time I was gone!! So even though I'd coached my students well on how to help each other with all of the apps, there's only so much you can do without wifi! 😥

I had promised my students we'd work on Genius Hour (G.H.) projects during the spring.  That became increasingly impossible after the first week I was home for two reasons - 1. The school year would end on May 16th for us this year, due to a building project within the district (our high school is being redone!!!); and 2. I just could not push all of this onto a substitute.  It is exhausting and overwhelming to do Genius Hour.  I absolutely love it and it is TOTALLY worth it, but I go home each day during their choice project time and have my family pull me out of my car and drag me up to my bed (That's when I am HEALTHY!). If you're thinking, "I don't think I'll do G.H. now",  DON'T THINK THAT!!

Here's why I love Genius Hour so much:
1. Students work so hard for projects they believe in.
2. I use Flipgrid to have my students "Pitch" their ideas for their projects.  This is great, because they have to think about what they want to do, do some research to make sure it's viable, write a little script from which to practice, then record their pitch on Flipgrid.  Students who don't otherwise have a voice, DO! Flipgrid is awesome, and with G.H., those quiet, shy students have a chance to voice their opinions in a more private way - I.heart.flipgrid!!
3. Students who may not write for other assignments are writing pages for you - without your reminders and prompts.
4. The level of engagement is FANTASTIC!  The level of energy in my classroom during G.H. is electric! I can't even begin to think of the best way to explain it, but I've never seen students - ALL students light up with excitement as much!
5. Students shine when they get to present their projects.  I use an iPad on a stand to record the students, then load their video into Seesaw to share with families, and even post on our Seesaw blog.  At times, I'll even do a live Tweet.  In the past, I've used Periscope directly to share happenings in my classroom - now it's even easier with it being embedded within Twitter! Gotta love simplified living!!

So this spring...Here's what I ended up doing....

I read the book, What Do You Do With a Problem,

and explained to the kiddos that I had a problem. I was going to be letting them down, I apologized to them and asked for forgiveness, but explained that with having my arm in a sling, being so exhausted, and not enough days left, they weren't going to be able to do the projects they'd pitched.  MAJOR SAD FACES! Most of them got over it quickly, but a couple took a few days to come to terms with it.  I respect that. We'd talked it up so much!
I wanted to replace the project with something fun, and would be something we could do over the course of several weeks.  I had already planned the idea of making things out of cardboard boxes and had collected boxes, but had not settled on the actual project until we read the book together.



Here's the book we read: What to Do With a Box  While we read it, the wheels started turning, and one of my students suggested he might make a car.  To piggy-back, I suggested a "what-if" - what if we all make some type of car and have a drive-in movie theater in our room and watch a movie during the last week of school?  That was it! It was decided and we were all hooked!  Paper plates and fasteners were purchased for wheels and steering wheels.  Personalized license plates were crafted - one was, "The Best" (pronounced The Beast 😉). Oh, the fun we had!!!! Here are some pictures in stages!









We had a real assembly line going with the boxes!  I was able to purchase 21 boxes from a local business, Drop and Go so all of my students had the same sizes to start with, and the boxes were blank on the outside.















We got water bottle donated from Tri-County Water in Hutchinson.  The water was so refreshing!














We watched the movie, Sing!  The cars were rockin' with a few of the tunes! 😉

So that's what how the end of the year ended for us with Genius Hour.  I'm sorry this post was so late!

I've been busy prepping for the NCTE WLU conference later this week in Tucson, AZ!! My friend, Cassie Froemming and I are presenting at one of the symposium sessions! I'll throw a post up about that later! I'm so excited to have a chance to share all of the great things I've been doing with my students in first grade!! Whoot-Whoot!!

Participate

Have you found Participate.com yet? I happened across them a little over a year ago, and so glad I did! This site has revolutionized my teaching for a several reasons:
  1. I.heart their tweet deck!! They have SOOOO many chat groups (over 500!!!) already to go on a calendar! If you don't already see yours, you can add it! Chatting through Participate is so easy.  Once, I had trouble getting online with them - I thought I was going to quit Twitter chats if it was going to be that hard without Participate. Seriously.
2. When you're done chatting, everything you've talked about and all resources collected through the chat can be curated in your account at Participate! FOR. REAL!!  AND....you don't have to type your #hashtagchat each time you want to post something!  Have I sold you yet?!
3. You can create collections of your own, or find items within Participate to add to your collections.  For example, my school uses Literacy by Design for language arts.  I add to it by curating videos to help teach themes.  Instead of trying to remember where I saved my videos on my computer, I simply save them within Participate, in a collection I created for Literacy by Design.  I have other collections for math, sea turtles, Black History Month, etc.
     I have to confess that I accidentally deleted my Literacy by Design collection a while ago, so I recently recreated it. Oopsies. Luckily I knew what I had in there! It does happen, and it was my fault!
4. You can also collaborate with other Participate users! There are chat windows you can open and have dialog with other users.  For example, I may want advice from someone on what else to add to my Black History collection.  I can invite other users, then ask them what I'd like to know. They reply back on their own time, similar to Twitter Direct Message, Facebook Messenger and emails.
5. Customer Service is fantastic!  If you have a problem or an idea to improve their service, please feel free to share it with them! The staff at Participate are THE BEST!
6. It's a free site, yes, but that doesn't even factor in for me.

So....have I convinced you to give them a try yet?  Here's my advice:
Start with an account.  You can create an account with email, Google+ or Twitter.
Join your favorite Twitter chat group for a few weeks and you'll be hooked!  You'll have Participate.com bookmarked on your computer toolbar, or always open, like me. 😊

But please don't stop there!  After you've gotten comfortable in chats, start a collection or two, and invite others to join Participate, too! Participate is a place for many to do just that - Participate! It is a verb - a vibrant, active place for teachers to come together to collaborate and work together, creating wonderful materials and resources for students worldwide!
I will blog more about their awesome Professional Development courses and badges soon, but I have run out of time for today.  My family duties call...aka laundry is stacking up, dishes, vacuuming, etc.

                       

Conference Symposium Application Overwhelmed!

Wow!  I have never applied to be a presenter at a major conference before.  I bow down to all of you who do this on a regular basis!!  My friend, Cassie and I are hoping to present at the NCTE summer global literacy conference in Tucson, AZ in July.  I just hit the submit button for us!
Poor Cassie has had the most Miserable cold EVER! Between meeting in person, Facebook messenger and Google Docs, we hammered out all the details.
I know the next one will be easier, but symposium writing...lesson plans for an awesome group of 1st graders...hmmm... 😊
I'm sorry it's been too long since my last post! Boo!!! Coming soon, I promise!! I've got great things to blog about!!! Here are a couple of sneak peeks at two of them:
Participate
Flipgrid
If you don't have accounts with either of them, head there now!  I'll be blogging about these great sites and the awesome potentials for you and your planning/students!