Monday, November 9, 2015

How Students Turned MISTAKES into MASTERPIECES!

How students may respond to a "mistake" prior to this activity:


How students will respond to a "mistake" after this activity: 


Showing students that making mistakes is okay one thing, but embracing them and seeing them as opportunities is something that takes practice!

Here's how our students changed their mindset: 

Download the Beautiful Oops activity here. There is a primary and intermediate version. Below shows the intermediate version. 

  • We reflected on the message through some close reading. 
  • We looked at things differently. 
  • 5. ...Then got a second opinion (cough..peer feedback...cough). 
 
  • After...we got CREATIVE! We added details to make our "mistakes" beautiful. We shared our masterpieces with peers and received MORE feedback! 
  • FINALLY, we reflected on the experience. 
BAM. In one 45 minute lesson, students practice the following Genius Hour skills: peer feedback, planning, AND reflection...with a little sprinkle of creativity.

Students had a blast turning these doodles into masterpieces. It made some students really shine. Here are some "after" photos of examples of what students came up with!


This one is unreal. If you look at it like this, it's a wolf...

But cover up the other side, and it's a bird! So creative!! 





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Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Building a Library of Books and Ideas!

Building a Library of Books and Ideas...for Genius Hour!!!

Before diving into a Genius Hour project, we spent some time discussing a growth mindset, practicing brainstorming, problem-solving, and collaborating. We had students practice peer feedback, make their learning visible in different ways, and reflect in a variety of ways. 

Our book discussions and activities with have helped us practice these skills and expose us to new ideas!

                         
               Activity                                               Activity                                                 Activity              














               Activity                                                                                                               Activity

(and more!) 

Picking A Topic for Genius Hour

In one of our previous posts, we had students complete an A Lot, Some, Little chart after picking a topic. This year, we spent some more time playing around with different ideas before getting to that lesson. 

Students Considered Their Passions...

We had students list out their favorite activities and their passions. We had students use each other as resources when brainstorming different topics. This was a good way to build community within the classroom.

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Students Considered Their Heartaches...

And...this was an even better way to build community within the classroom. Students can easily make connections when they hear that someone else plays soccer or another person likes to play Minecraft. But when you hear another student is afraid of talking in front of the class or another person gets worried about making a mistake...that...that is how you build community. Often, it's the things that cause us sadness, heartache, or anger that cause us to take action and do something differently. We had students think more about problems in their schools and communities that they wanted to tackle. We also had students follow their hearts and consider what makes their hearts swell, as well as what makes their hearts ache. Check them all out here! Not only did we find that our classroom became a little closer, but it also sparked some new topics for Genius Hour that may not have come about without these activities!

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We want to send a big SHOUT OUT to the monthly Genius Hour Chat for introducing us to this idea! It meets on Twitter (#geniushour) the first Thursday of every month at 8pm central time. Find us there! #20percentgenius

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Friday, October 9, 2015

What Do You Do With An Idea?


 Image result for real talk

As adults, there are times when we get nervous sharing an idea. We get nervous sharing at a staff meeting or sometimes put off a new way of doing something because it might not be perfect. 

At first, the idea seems perfect!...but then you start doubting yourself. What if it doesn't work? What if people don't like it...or worse...what if they laugh? There are times we push ideas away because of this fear...and sometimes, that causes regret. 
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We want our students to be fearless. To be brave. To make mistakes...and feel okay with that.

Our students need to hear those stories. They need to know that we have had the same feelings. Sometimes, it gets the best of us...and sometimes, we don't let it and instead, let our ideas grow!

What Do You Do With An Idea? is the perfect book to introduce this idea of getting anxious when we aren't sure how others will take our ideas. Not only does it talk about the feelings that bring us down when we feel like we can't share or build on an idea, but it also explains how thrilling it can feel to feed an idea and let it grrrooOOOOWWWW!


This is the book that you need to read with your kids before starting Genius Hour. Check out the lesson we did with it here!

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Monday, September 28, 2015

Get Your Students in the Right Mindset


What skills do your students need to be successful in the 21st Century?

How about persistence, a growth mindset, creativity, and hard-working? Those sound like skills that we want students to practice during Genius Hour! Oh wait, those are just a few of the fantastic examples that students came up with after reading Rosie Revere, Engineer.


Why this book?

This wonderful book written by Andrea Beaty chronicles young Rosie's attempts at making gadgets and gizmos to help her friends and family. She's worried about what people think about her ideas. She doesn't get it right the first time. Or the second. Or the third. She gets knocked down but gets right back up! Hey, that sounds a lot like she has a growth mindset! (Check out how we introduced growth mindset here!) 

Start by reading the book as a class and practicing some creativity.

We had students begin by being creative by imagining different uses for a towel, just like Rosie and engineers! We had some wacky ideas...some creative ones...and some plain ol' PUNNY ones (a decoration for a baby shower...see what he did there?!)!



Dig a little deeper.

What characteristics did Rosie have? Why are these important? How did she feel throughout the book? What do engineers do? How do they help people? Why is this important?



Not only did we learn about engineers, STEM, and reinforce the idea of a growth mindset, but we sparked a new interest for several students by exploring engineers!

Listen to the author and engineers!

Northern Illinois University has a great website (that they are keep adding to) that includes videos and activities for different books. If you haven't had a chance, check it out here! 



Act like an engineer!

The next step involves students collaborating, brainstorming, and problem-solving! (Hey-sounds like some more practice with 21st Century Skills!) Students worked in small groups to brainstorm problems they have noticed in the classroom, school, and community. After picking one of the problems to try to tackle, they brainstormed many different solutions and created a plan for it. 

Not only are they identifying problems, brainstorming solutions, but we had some friends who are considering this for GENIUS HOUR!  

 Image result for 2 birds one stone meme
Get the entire lesson here!







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Thursday, September 24, 2015

How to Introduce Growth Mindset to your Intermediate Students

 For the first time ever, we decided to teach a lesson on Growth Mindset to our students! Here's how we went about it!

Read The Most Magnificent Thing


Simply do a read aloud and discuss her character traits, or if you have time try this AMAZING reading lesson that promotes creativity and incorporates planning and peer feedback! (Yay for getting those Genius Hour elements in!) 

Read About how the Brain Works

We used this article to teach students that the brain is like a muscle that needs to be worked! We had the class read the article aloud, then had students answer comprehension questions with a group. 

Make Connections Between the two and Create an Anchor Chart

We asked students to share character traits (and provide evidence) of the main character in the story. We then asked students to share the gist of the Brain is Like a Muscle article. We set that a mindset is like a belief, and that the character in The Most Magnificent Thing believes in the Growth Mindset, and the author of the other article does as well. Based on this, we asked students to define what a Growth Mindset is. 

We provided examples of something someone with a fixed mindset might say and how to change your wording to shift to a growth mindset. Students then provided their own examples of both fixed and growth mindset phrases.


To conclude the lesson, we directed students' attention to the posters hanging in the room. We said that students can use these as a reference and add to it throughout the year. 



Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom, that's it! 

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Monday, August 31, 2015

Making Your Classroom Genius Hour READY in 4 Steps (or so...)

Decorating 101:  

Step 1: Print

Download the bulletin board from our TpT Store.

Step 2: Laminate

So you can reuse them...
A photo posted by Lauren Miller (@diaryofa21stcenturyteacher) on


Step 3: Hang 

 This is seriously one of my favorite products because it takes NO time at all to put up and is so BRIGHT!

Step 4: Repeat. 




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Thursday, August 20, 2015

Genius Hour 20 Day Challenge - Day 20: Genius Hour Self-Evaluation

Day 20: Genius Hour Self-Evaluation



Okay...so maybe that's not what you want your students to do. Self-Evaluation is an important part of the process.

The process. The process is the most important part of Genius Hour. Sure, you want your students to come up with a great final project that they are proud of, but it's more important that students get better and better at learning how to learn. This is how you help them be successful in their future in education, careers, and in life! They need to know how to pull out key information, skim/scan, take notes, organize and re-organize learning, synthesize, and share! They also need to practice Habits of Mind like Persisting and Communicating with Clarity and Precision.

So...how do we assess Genius Hour? Well...students get a LOT of feedback from their peers and their teachers to help them improve throughout the process. At the end, we have students do a Self-Evaluation. You could use one of the formats below OR work with your students to come up with a self-evaluation form for your class to use.







   Check out some of our self-evaluations here!

   I would encourage you to use scales in your self-evaluation (YES!    The kids will need MODELING for this!) After doing Genius
   Hour a few times, we started having students fill this out at the
   beginning of an experience and at the end (they also had to provide    evidence - hey Common Core!). It was so exciting for students to
   reflect upon the process and have a visual for how much they felt      they had grown!








Winner gets to select one product from our store for FREE!


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Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Genius Hour 20 Day Challenge - Day 19: Share!

Day 19: Share!


THIS IS THE BEST DAY!!!!


After students have had some time to work on how they are are going to share their learning, spend some class time SHARING! You and your students will see that all of this hard work was worth it! 

If you have students who have a different audience than the classroom, have them share what they did. We had a student who researched about different types of wolves. She found one species whose numbers were going down again after being taken off of the endangered species list. She wrote to the World Wildlife Federation with her research asking them to put this species back on the list. It was really neat to see her look beyond the classroom and figure out how she can make a difference for one of her passions. (Anddddd....it's also helpful for students to show other students how they find audiences outside of the classroom.)

Think about others that you may want to invite in for presentations - parents, administrators, other teachers, speech/language pathologists, and more! They can just pop in for a presentation or two. So neat!

Here are some of the cool projects that our students shared! Looking at these makes me SO excited to get this back up and running again!!














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Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Genius Hour 20 Day Challenge - Day 18: Creation Station & Video Tutorials


Day 18: Creation Station & Video Tutorials


Now it's time to create! 

Some of your students may get to this step a lot sooner than others, it really all depends on what they choose to do for Genius Hour.



This question required a lot of researching before getting started on the creating part:

How can we create a fossil guide for fossil hunters who want to know what periods so they can find the fossils they want?


This question from a 4th grader required some researching before getting started on creating, but the largest portion of the project was spent problem-solving and trying to make it work.

How do 3D Printers work, and how can I program one to make a model of a finger joint?



As the facilitator of this experience, you will need to meet students where they are at and push them to the next level. This can be a little scary at first, but it's ALL WORTH IT!

For the first Genius Hour experience, you may have students fall back on the staples of presentations like Powerpoint slideshows or posters. The more times you do it, though, the more variety there will be in how students choose to show their learning! 

On our Google Site (available in our MEGA BUNDLE), you will find Product How-Tos. We have videos showing how to use Explain Everything, Comic Life, and more! We also have written explanations for how to make Google Slideshows, Prezi, and more! Having these tutorials helps student be more independent during this stage. 

When you do this mini-lesson, all you have to do is show your students the different tutorials and allow them some time to explore. As you notice students who are really strong in a certain area (like Google Slideshows), crown them the experts! Encourage other students to ask for help from these experts!


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Monday, August 17, 2015

Genius Hour 20 Day Challenge - Day 17: Conferring

Day 17: Conferring

Conferring is something that should be happening each session. Nothing is more valuable than just having a conversation with students to understand how to best meet their needs. Conferring is pretty informal and on an as-needed basis for me, but this form helps me keep records and communicate with parents. At this point students have been researching for quite some time and are...

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After students think they have finished their research and have written a paragraph answering their question, we have them put a red cup on top. 

Remember this?


This gives a visual cue to us that they are ready to be checked. (Even though they have a red cup on top at this point, we do have them give each other peer feedback on our Google Site.)

When they get "checked," we meet with them to go over their paragraphs and make sure that they can answer all of these questions:
  • Have you answered your question?
  • Are there any holes in your research?
  • How do you plan on sharing your information? 
  • Who/What would be the best audience?
  • Do you have any other questions?
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Throughout the process, they get A LOT of feedback from their peers and from their teacher. This final conference allows us to provide constructive feedback (as well as lots of positive feedback for all of their hard work!) to push students to make their projects even stronger. 

This step is also really important for your friends who are like this:

Image result for turtle meme didn't talk today

Everyone has that student or two who is very reserved and prefers not to say much. THIS STEP IS FOR THOSE STUDENTS. When students get reassurance from their peers and teachers that they worked hard and did a fantastic job, they start to step out of their shells a little more. I cannot tell you how empowering Genius Hour is for these students. By giving them the choice in what they research AND how they research it, as well as the space/time to share what they learned, they feel more confident. You will notice a BIG difference, especially for these students when they get ready to share what they learned. We have several students who would get incredibly nervous when asked to give a presentation for a different subject but who absolutely nailed it when they were given the space to share their passions. 


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