Genius Hour 20 Day Challenge - Day 12: Writing a Plan & Organization Tips

Day 12: Writing a Plan & Organization Tips

Your class WILL be split in two.

Group 1:                                                         Group 2:

No matter what camp your students are in, the first time they write out a plan, it will look something like this:

• research dogs
• interview aunt
• write notes
• make project
• present

Wait a minute...What dogs? How are you going to interview your aunt without writing out questions or setting up a time to interview her? How are you going to "take notes" - photographs? Record a video? Jot down ideas from a website? What are you going to do to share what you learned? Do you need to gather resources? If so, what? 

So...let's take some steps back. 

We write the following on chart paper and post this in our room. After students write their plans, we have them go back to this chart and make sure that they have everything. 

Download the planning mini lesson here. Get ready to do some modeling...and make it FIERCE!

Let's say that you were trying to figure out which dog was the best fit for your family. After talking with family members and friends, you narrow it down to golden retrievers and french bulldogs. Your plan may look something like this:

Question: Which dog is the best fit for my family and why? How can I help others figure out the best dog for them?

1. Create chart with golden retrievers and french bulldogs

                                                    Golden Retrievers                       French Bulldogs

           Temperament

           Ease of Training

           Size

           Care

           Other

           

1. Research: golden retrievers temperament, golden retrievers care, golden retrievers training, & golden retrievers size
2. Write notes in chart
3. Research: french bulldog temperament, french bulldog care, french bulldog training, & french bulldog size
4. Write notes in chart
5. Ask aunt and friend if they would answer a few questions about their dogs (golden retriever & french bulldog)
6. Write interview questions
7. Set up interview times
8. Interview aunt & friend
9. Write down my family's daily schedule/needs (Are there allergies? How often is my family home to take care of the dog?)
10. Look at information and decide which is the best dog for my family and WHY
11. Share information with family
12. Create brochure to help others figure out how which dog is best for them
13. Practice presentation
14. Present

Five steps went to 14....and at this point, you're probably exhausted from wracking your brain of all of the different steps needed to complete your project.

Why do we have kids do this? LOTS OF REASONS!

• It helps them plan ahead.
• As students work through projects, we model that it's okay to go back and add a step or take a step. Everything is not going to go as planned.
• It keep them on track. They know the next step.
• Helps them break down a big project into more manageable pieces. This is an incredibly important life skill! 

YOU CAN DO IT!  But wait....now you have 20-30 different projects going on.

How do we stay organized?! 

Google Sites! Keep all plans, research, reflections, and projects in one place using our bundle. Using this template on our Google site helps us keep track of all Genius Hour work. Classroom management during this time is another challenge.

Green, yellow, and red cups to the rescue! We give each student 3 cups and explain what each means. 

It's just like a stoplight!

Green on top = Good to go

Yellow on top = Need some help, but can keep working for now

Red on top = Stuck - can't go on without help

By using these cups, it provides a quick way of glancing around the room and seeing who needs help. At first, you'll probably notice that your students will go right to the red cup. AH! The website isn't loading. I don't know what to do next. I don't know what this word means.

This will take some time. You need to help your students realize when they can keep working and when they need help immediately. 

Try it! It works!

Genius Hour 20 Day Challenge - Day 11: Final Questions & Final Project Discussion

Day 11: Final Questions & Final Project Discussion

You're almost there!

After you have students use their critical friends to review the question, they will come to you for final approval. The purpose of this stage is to help students tweak their questions, if needed, to make them more accessible or to push students a little further.


Before: How do you care for a Dwarf Hamster? 
After: How do you care for a Dwarf Hamster? How can we share this information with other kids who want to adopt a Dwarf Hamster?

Before: What are the different parts of the brain, and how do they work?
After: What are the different parts of the brain, and how do they work? How can I strengthen them?

Before: How can we learn new magic tricks?
After: How can we learn new magic tricks and create a show with everyday objects?


When we give advice to students, we ask them different questions to guide them into doing something with the information whether it's creating, sharing for a specific audience, modeling, or designing. For Genius Hour, we don't want our students to just regurgitate the information. We want them to DO something with the information that they get.

Try asking your students some of these questions to help them make their questions even stronger:

• What will do or make with the information that you gather?
• Who might be interested in learning about your research? How can you share this with them?
• How can you show your learning?

Your students will be at different places. For some, coming up with the question will be easy-peasy. For those who get it right away, send them to do some pre-searching to get some basic information. for others, it will require some more prompting and questions.

Once everyone has their questions ready to do, you will notice a change in your step. Suddenly, you'll want to throw on your sunglasses and STRUT YOUR STUFF.

Genius Hour 20 Day Challenge - Day 10: Critical Friends

Day 10: Critical Friends

A critical friend is someone who is encouraging and supportive, but who also provides honest feedback. Critical friends provide feedback that is constructive and will help make your question/project/paper/speech even BETTER. Let's face it, critical friends can be your best friends!

If you have not seen the video, Austin's Butterfly, do yourself a favor and watch it now! This is a WONDERFUL video to show your kids, too, about how feedback can make our projects even better!

We need critical friends who "keep it real." If your class is used to mainly giving positive feedback like "I like how Susie Snowbucket described the hamburger-it made me hungry" or "I like how Johnny Lunchbox started his paper with a question-it made me want to keep reading"....then you may want to do an activity or two like the ones below...

Introductory Feedback Activity

Alright, so now your friends are ready to "keep it real..."

After your students have developed their own inch, foot, and yard questions, they will pick one of the yard questions as their draft research question. Here's the form we use. 

Students will write draft research question at the top of the page. Independently, they should go down the list of questions on the sheet. If ANY of the answers are yes, then they should tweak their question until they get all no's. Then...it's time for that critical friend.

The critical friend will write his/her name on top of the chart and then provide feedback for each of the questions. 

Sometimes, kids hit it out of the park right away...other times, they need another shot at it.

It's okay! Just do it again...

When students are ready, they will come to you to get final approval. Some may need a tweak here or there...

It takes teamwork!

Genius Hour 20 Day Challenge - Day 9: Question Drafts

Day 9: Question Drafts

WOOOOOHOOO! Your kids have research topics!

Now, it's time for the...

Research questions just don't appear out of nowhere, though. Before you can even start to answer a good solid research question (or YARD question!), you need to answer some smaller (INCH & FOOT) questions.

Our Genius Hour Preparation Activities will help you through all of this.

After students have narrowed down their topics into smaller categories, we have them start to develop their own inch, foot, and yard questions. This...can...get...tricky - but all this work is SO helpful in getting students to work on asking stronger and stronger questions.

This page can be found in the bundle [above].

Good research questions: 

• requires you to use a source other than yourself to find the answer
• can be researched - there is actually information out there to help you find the answer
• not too broad (too much information that would take too long to find the answer), or not too narrow (little exploration)

Have your students focus on the categories of Some or A Little as they generate questions. They should try to come up with questions for topics that they want to dive deeper into. 

Have them refer back to the Inch, Foot, Yard posters in your classroom!

Don't worry...

A research question is coming....

20 Day Genius Hour Challenge - Day 8: A Lot, Some, Little Activity

Day 8: A Lot, Some, Little Activity

Some students may be ready to go as soon as you give them the opportunity to pick ANY topic that they want to explore. Others may have ideas...

that may need some work.

If this is your first time, you may want to have your students do a little pre-searching before picking a topic. When you pre-search, you use Google or any search engine to dig a little deeper into different topics.

Ask yourself:

• What's new or interesting that I didn't know about this topic before?
• What new questions do I have now?
• Are there any connections that I can make with other topics?

After students have decided on a topic like "Dogs" or "3D Printing" or "kite-flying"...or...

We have students explore their topics a little further using an A Lot, Some, Little table (which is available on our TpT site - woohoo!)

Before you have kids do this, make sure you do 3 things: MODEL, MODEL, & MODEL!

No. Not like that.

Walk your kids through the process. Without modeling, you will get a LOT of charts that look like this:

Topic: Dogs

A Lot: fluffy, hairy, big, 4 legs, 2 eyes, big tail, Rover is the best!

Remind your students to think about the smaller topics within each category. What do you know A LOT about? What do you know some things about, but maybe you aren't an expert in? What have you heard an adult talk about or one of your friends mention once or twice? 

As your students work on this chart, walk around and help them dive deeper into their topics and stretch themselves to add to the list. They will be using a topic from the Some or A Little category for their Genius Hour projects?

WAIT A MINUTE...WHAT'S THAT?! You have some kids who can't doooooooo it...take a step back. Maybe direct them toward our Growth Mindset posters. Do some pre-searching OR have them fill out a chart like this to get their juices flowin'!

Resources:

Science Kids: Fun Science & Technology for Kids  Includes a wide variety of science related topics with interactive resources.

Career Resources - What do you want to be when you grow up?  Includes links to learn about different careers.

Genius Hour 20 Day Challenge - Day 7: Searchable Words for Google

Day 7: Searchable Words for Google

Remember the Bloom's Taxonomy questioning post (Day 5)? Using questions from this activity allowed us to practice search terms. We just had students underline key search terms and write notes next to each question.

At this point, reiterate to your students that we want YARD questions, AKA questions that can't be answered in one search online. Therefore, the classic type in the whole question trick won't really work. Let's use this foot question to help guide:

What makes French Bulldogs unique?  

1. What is the main topic of this question? French Bulldogs
2. What other words are important? unique
3. Are there any other synonyms or more specific words you can adjust to help find your answer? charactaristics instead of unique, traits instead of unique
4. Google Search: French bulldog characteristics OR French bulldog traits

Always sample their search terms to see if you can actually find them. Try searching it even if they give a totally incorrect answer. We once had a student that suggested we search "What" and "makes" in this question (seriously). Instead of prompting the student, we just projected Google for him to see, and tried it out. We asked him to observe what came up, and he quickly realized that he needed the other words in the question to find his answer.

Let's use this higher level thinking question for an example now:

What is the difference between a French Bulldog and a Golden Retriever, and which is a better fit for my family? 

1. What are the main topics? French Bulldog and Golden Retriever
2. Since most sites probably won't have information on both topics, you might research each separately. 
3. What other words are important? difference, family, fit
4. Which part of this question can be found online, and which part requires us to draw OUR OWN conclusions? finding the difference can be found online, and deciding if it's a good fit can be done in my head
5. What kinds of searches can help you find the differences between French Bulldogs and Golden Retreivers? 

• care for French Bulldog
• care for Golden Retriever
• training French Bulldog
• training Golden Retriever
• French Bulldog activity
• Golden Retriever activity
• French Bulldog pros and cons
• Golden Retriever pros and cons 

Why the focus on French Bulldogs you may ask? 

Seriously? Need I say more?

There's nothing wrong with sharing a good website with students, but providing feedback to help students with using better search terms is necessary. Here's an example of a way to help students find a website, but still allowing them to think about how their search terms affect what sites you find.

For more advanced Google-ers, this infographic may be helpful. Not sure I'm even at this level yet, but it would be a great poster for the classroom for students to refer to.

Genius Hour 20 Day Challenge - Day 6: Reflection Practice

Day 6: Reflection Practice

Reflecting about the process and being metacognitive is an important part of the process. From the beginning of the year, I had students blogging and reflecting about their learning and their classroom behavior. This really helped them be more thorough in their Genius Hour reflections. Go to Lauren's Teachers Pay Teachers store to download this FREEBIE. 

You could also go to Kristin's TpT store to get this FREEBIE of Self-Reflection Starters.

If reflecting isn't a regular part of your day, at this point we recommend getting your students to start reflecting about the Genius Hour process. Don't expect in-depth, eye-opening, life changing realizations the first few reflection experiences. Many of the reflections at first was a lot like one of my favorite Bachelor contestant's response.

If you use a class blog like Weebly, KidBlog, or Edmodo, provide students with prompts such as: 

• What was a challenge you faced today? How did you get through it?
• What was something easy or enjoyable today? Why? 
• What do you like or dislike about this step of Genius Hour? 

Keep the prompts fairly open-ended. If you feel that students aren't sharing enough, reply back with a follow up question.

Lauren here! Here are some examples of ways I incorporated reflection into my 4th grade classroom.

I had students revise their writing and reflect on the process.

Here's a reflection from a social studies primary source lesson.

At the end of the year, I had students share their plan for completing an at home volcano project, and then reflect on the process.