Passion Projects, Genius Hour, 20 Time - Whatever You Call It - Part 2

Update: I have had NUMEROUS request for my rubric and information on the inspiration stations. I very nervously took a step outside my comfort zone and placed these items on Teachers Pay Teachers. Thank you all for your support and interest in my work. You have definitely put spring in my step and a bit more confidence in my soul. You can find the items here by clicking here. Thank you!

Genius Hour is in full swing! A fellow 8th grade ELA teacher and I are working through this unit together. It's refreshing to have someone with which to plan, bounce ideas, fail, and SUCCEED! Collaboration makes teaching much more fun. If you are looking to do this unit (or any other unit), please feel free to contact me! I'm always looking for other teachers with which to chat or pair our students for a project. (In fact, we've got some BIG ideas for this Fall involving Coastal Cleanup. If you live in a coastal community, I need you!)

We've got great projects going, and I am beyond excited to see how the progress. I have never been this excited about my classroom at the end of the school year (19 school days left, but who's counting), but this project has renewed by energy and drive to finish out the year STRONG! 

Last week our wonderful ITS* came in and taught my students about Essential Questions. These things are difficult for most teachers! I was really worried about trying to get eighth graders to write their own, but Katie did an ah-mazing job as always. She broke down the difference between essential and non-essential questions with great examples and activities that had the students up and moving. The students left on Friday saying they had a pretty good idea of how to write their own Essential Questions.

*We are a 1:1 county. Each student has a MacBook Air. Part of our Digital Renaissance is having ITSs. They help teachers with collaboration, teaching ideas, tech ideas, and so much more. They will even come in and teach your class (like she did here). It's a wonderful resource!

The truth came out today, and they really did understand! I was so proud. Several needed tweaking, but overall they did better than I do with essential questions. Here are a few I remember off the top of my head (I'll get full list to upload later this week):

• How do dreams define our emotions? 
• How are human brains tricked by optical illusions? 
• How are resources and knowledge used to create music? 
• How do I use my knowledge of art skills to create art? 
• How can a fishing pole be designed to make fishing easier for the elderly and disabled? 
• How do yoga poses affect the human brain? 
• How does what is considered “good art” vary from culture to culture?

For some reason my brain seems to remember the "how" questions, but I'll post a better variety later this week. 

Their final products/presentations vary from tricking the class with optical illusions to creating their own natural make up to painting a mural as long as my classroom wall. These next few weeks are going to be a serious buzz!

After I approved their essential questions and final product ideas, they created a 60-second pitch. I got this wonderful activity from Laura Randazzo on one of her 20 Time Updates! I highly recommending checking out all her ideas and posts about 20 Time before attempting this unit. She is pure genius and a ton of amazing. 

This activity gave students a quick opportunity to practice speaking to the class and see how the class perceives their project idea. It also turned into a great brainstorming session where the class gave the speaker more ideas and questions to consider as they go forward. More times for the students to take control of their learning and the teacher to smile at what they've accomplished this year!

"Don't forget your paperwork Wazowski."

There are four key paperwork items I feel were definitely required for this project:

• Parent Letter - Letting students complete a project on make up or fishing can sound a bit ridiculous to parents (especially when students start asking for supplies!). Thankfully, Laura Randazzo is pretty incredible, and her parent letter is spot on! I used her letter as a template for mine. 

• Rubric - I'm a big advocate for giving out the rubric before I even introduce the project. Students should know what is expected of them from the get go, plus it makes life easier when the project is due - there are no excuses for "I didn't know what I was getting graded on." It's all in the rubric!

• Contract - This contract made sure each student laid out exactly what the student intends to do. This contract is actually tomorrow's class activity. I will conference with each student, and we will compete the contract together. We are a 1:1 school, so they will keep a copy of the contract in their Google Drive folder (that I have access to as well), and I will keep a signed copy in my Genius Hour folder. 
• Timeline/Checklist - On the back of each contract, I have a chart set up with deadlines. During the conference, I plan to work with each student to set manageable goals. It's really hard to give class wide deadlines when the projects are so different! The checklist helps break it down by student.

Well! That's a bunch! Check back for my next blog post on what students are doing when they miss deadlines for Genius Hour or aren't staying on task. 

Passion Projects, Genius Hour, 20 Time - Whatever You Call It - Part 1

Whoa - I can't say I have ever had a lesson go as beautifully as it did today. Today was one of those Holy Grail of teaching days. The class is a beautiful hub of learning, excitement, and engagement. My 8th graders, after days and days of state testing, were no longer brain dead maniacs - they were participating and ready to learn! If you haven't tried Genius Hour (or whichever name you want to give it), it's high time you get started!

What is Genius Hour? 20 Time? Passion Projects? This is the video I showed my students to introduce the unit:

This unit, as explained in this video, is giving students 20% (hence the name 20 Time) of their class time to research something they are passionate (hence the name Passion Projects) about and become geniuses (hence the name Genius Hour) on that topic.

For the sake of our classes (I'm working with a fellow 8th grade ELA teacher on this unit) we're calling is Genius Hour. Instead of giving my students 20% of our class time, I'm giving them a little under 20% of the school year at one time. We've learned how to write, read, analyze, paraphrase, summarize, cite, infer, discuss, collaborate, and so on and so forth - but did they really get it? Can they really do all of those things at once without my guidance? We are about to find out! These last few weeks of school my classroom will be completely flipped! The students pick their topics, their research methods, their collaboration techniques, and their end product. It's their turn to teach me! We are oh-so excited about it too!

My goal is to post blogs each week from now through the end of the unit. We're going to fail. We're going to mess up. 

We're going to learn!

We kicked off the unit today by going over the basic requirements and the general rubric. I introduced deadlines and gave very specific consequences for not being activity involved in Genius Hour (independent book studies of the nonfiction books of my choice). Then we got to the fun part!

To help students get their creative juicing flowing, I set up 

s!

I had 11 different stations set up around the room where students could get a small peak of hands on experience in different areas. Examples:

1. Bubbles: What types of soaps make the best bubbles? Use the water and soaps at this station (foaming hand soap, dish soap, laundry soap, and shampoo) to create your own bubble formula. What worked? What didn't work?
2. Cooking: Taste the two types of chocolate at this station (one was unsweetened baker's chocolate and the other was semisweet morsels - this station was so funny!). Use many, varied, unusual words to describe the taste of each chocolate. How do you think each chocolate it used in cooking? What could you cook with each chocolate?
3. Calligraphy: Watch the instructional video on calligraphy and practice writing your name following the instructions using the calligraphy pens at this station. Was it as easy as the video showed it to be? What proved to be most difficult for you?

Using their sense to decide what type of plant this was (mint).

Practicing origami.

Analyzing different types of rocks and deciding what natural events could have shaped them.

Practicing drawing.

Working on photography and changes in F-Stop and ISO.

Comparing/Contrasting a fleece blanket with a crochet blanket. Could you crochet?

Make your own bubbles!

They were moving. They were talking. They were working. They were thinking! We debriefed at the end of class, and I was blown away at project ideas these students already have.

Tomorrow we have a wonderful Guest Speaker coming to teach the students how to write their own Essential/Guiding questions as they begin narrowing down their project topic.

In my next post, I will include the rubric, full list of Inspiration Stations (I left that file on my school computer desktop and not dropbox), and the parent letter.