Genius Hour

We had a brainstorming session about our Genius Hour projects today! Students were supposed to answer the following questions: What are you passionate about? What do you want to know more about? What big questions do you have about the world? These questions are to help students come up with a project and topic that they can work on from now until December. We will spend some time each week researching for our projects and working on our presentations. We will start presenting our projects in December.

Students brought home their Genius Hour folders. These will need to come back by Tuesday. The folders have their brainstorming paper and two project proposals in them. Students need to come up with two project ideas by Tuesday. I will sit down with each student and discuss their ideas. I will approve one of them, and send home the approved proposal for you to sign as well.

Genius Hour projects need to have a question that cannot be answered by a quick internet search. Since students will be researching and working on these projects for several months, it needs to be something that will last that long and hold your child's attention.

Students need to bring back both proposals by Tuesday. They can bring them in any day this week, but must be completed by Tuesday.

Please contact me if you have any questions about the project. This is supposed to be a fun learning opportunity for students. I am looking forward to hearing their ideas! This project will be graded, but my focus is not on the grade, it is on students learning about a topic that interests them. There is a rubric in the Genius Hour folder that you can look at if you are interested.

Below are some videos we watched in class about Genius Hour. The first one explains what Genius Hour is and the second video has some examples of projects sixth grade students did at another school.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEQzKH7v0-Q

(Start at 1:26)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl-FucEbUSM

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