Monday, August 8, 2016

Genius Hour: Round 2!



Good afternoon all!  I hope you are having a wonderful week.  Here at my district we are going into our first full week of returning to work and I am slowly getting used to my normal routine.  As much as I love summers off, I really enjoy being in a routine and going to work every day.  Something about having a schedule makes my Type A personality extremely happy. 

This week I discussed my Genius Hour club with librarians in our school district.  It was so much fun to share my memories and lessons from this club.  At the end of last year I shared some lessons from my first year of Genius Hour in this post.  Today I want to share with you my plan for this coming year in Genius Hour. 

If you click the link below it will take you to the Prezi that I used in my professional development session.  On there I include an outline of my 10 week plan, including topics for your mini lessons and some tips for your club. 

Prezi Presentation


Some of the things I will be changing this year include having students interview experts in their topic, a more detailed lesson on citing sources, and giving students time to explore two topics before choosing one to create their Genius question.  I also created a Genius Hour Notebook for students to use to track their progress and organize their research.  If you click the link below, you can download the notebook for free!  I hope you find it useful for your students.  I include an extra research graphic organizer if you have any kiddos that need set spaces for their research.  It's very simple but might be useful for some kids.  You have my permission to copy, reuse, and alter the notebook to make it fit your needs for your club.

Genius Hour Notebook


Do you have more ideas for Genius Hour?  Leave them in the comments below!  Thank you to all the teachers that came to my session and listened to me talk for the hour.  Hopefully you learned something new you can take with you into this year!

Until next time, happy reading.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks so much for a great presentation and wonderful materials! I'm going to use this with my middle school advisory students in the library, I think they'll love it.

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