When I started Genius Hour (GH) one of the biggest hurdles (and also the one that I thought would be the easiest) was igniting my students passions and helping them choose a topic that would be right for their GH project. I struggled to control the excitement of choosing a topic and the realm of topics got out of hand quickly. This was when I realized I needed to choose the right organizer and learning process for my class and I turned to the magic of the internet for help. At the bottom of this post you can view some of the resources I used to channel excitement. For us the process of choosing topics went something like this:
- mind map to brainstorm some of the things we like/are passionate about - narrow down topics to our top 3 - do a KWL chart for each topic to see which one we knew least about - After choosing our least known topic we then created a list of 5 questions about the topic to guide our research During this time I worked closely with students and had individual conferences with each student to ask them questions and clarify so that I would know what path each of my students chose. By engaging students in this process many of them realized that they had more prior knowledge about certain subjects than they realized. This process worked for a majority of my students and have led them to have many successes in their learning. For others I had to adapt my plan and use the research that I did with the websites/resources below to make a program that was more suited to individualized learning. Overall I had great success with this process and I hope that it helps you in igniting passions in your students. Happy Geniusing and Cheers, Brianna Some resources that I have found helpful for exploring and focusing student passions are:
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