For years I’ve been wanting to give my students 20% of their class time to work on projects that matter to them. Call it Genius Hour or Passion Projects or 20% Time, it’s something I’ve been wanting to offer my students, but I never did.
“How can I prepare kids for state exams if I lose 20% of my curriculum time?”
“I can barely cover all my curriculum in the time I have now, how could I possibly cover it all with 20% less time?”
Even though I’ve never been one to place too much importance on state tests and I’m not a teacher who worries about coverage of curriculum at the expense of taking more time to understand, I still felt those pressures! Admittedly, we teachers feel those pressures, from within or without, with any project-based experience we provide our students. Outside forces worry that when students work on projects instead of traditional types of learning experiences the students do not learn as much content. Content is more important in the eyes of some than the skills learned when working on projects with other students where teamwork is required. So to let students choose the topics is even more risky than just doing project work with the Science content we are studying!
My biggest concern was what I would say to a parent that approached me concerned that their child would not get as much instruction with the NGSS and/or other Science experiences. That seemed like a valid concern to me
For those students who are interested in pursuing careers in Science, if I offer them time in Science class to pursue their passions they could very well choose Science topics. Still, I felt the guilt of not offering the Science students a full year of Science experiences.
So year after year, I decided against Genius Hour even though I knew that the skills kids would use while researching, practicing, engaging with, and presenting their projects would not only be valuable but would also be applicable to any situation, including Science. The idea that students would be engaged in projects that they get to choose and are therefore passionate about, also means that they will be more interested. This could mean that I will get more students completing Genius Hour projects than my Science projects.
So this year I decided to take the plunge and offer my students 20% of their entire year, every Friday, to work on projects of their choosing with no limits placed on their choice other than they have to be school appropriate. Why did I finally do it this year? Honestly, I don’t know. Part of the reason was that I got to teach all of the 8th graders this year. Since 8th graders are older I thought they would be more mature about being given such freedom and since I have all the 8th graders they would all get the same Science curriculum anyway so there wouldn’t be any students getting more “Science” than others. It just felt right.
After a full semester of having my two 8th grade classes work on projects of their own choosing every Friday I can honestly say that it has been a great experience for both students and for me. Every Friday there is a feeling in the classroom that I can only describe as freedom and complete independence. Kids come in excited and eager to get to work. And they do get right to work as soon as they enter the room. I often start them off with some reminders and announcements, as well as running a Classcraft random event but I really don’t need to. I have had days that I am sitting at my desk watching students work, some alone, some in teams, happily researching, writing, making presentations, making videos, taking notes. Literally doing all the things I teach them to do with my regular curriculum. They don’t even notice me! I don’t have to redirect, remind, coerce, or otherwise motivate them to work. They just do!
To compare, 8th graders have been working concurrently on a really cool project. Well, really cool to me! It’s the Future City Competition. This year’s theme, designing a city that could withstand severe weather fit perfectly with our weather unit. Kids got to design their city on SimCity to test out their ideas and learn how to plan a city, they got to create a 3D Model of their city and they are currently presenting their cities. The difference between this project and their Genius Hour projects is that more teams were off task for the Future City project than their own Genius Hour projects. I have to do a lot more scaffolding, helping, cajoling, redirecting, reminding, and overall micromanaging for the Future City Project than for the Genius Hour Projects!!
With regards to the Future City Project I go around answering questions and helping students but with their Genius Hour
So I am going to share the resources I used to get my 8th graders started on their Genius Hour Projects because one thing I learned from a great teacher, Nicholas Provenzano, aka @thenerdyteacher, is that the year he didn’t give his students planning documents for their projects, they struggled more! So he learned how important that had been after trying to go without it! I got to see Nicholas present IN PERSON at last year’s NCCE conference so I actually got to meet him! It was so cool.
Full disclosure: I found all of the materials below online so even though I tweaked them all a bit I created NONE of them on my own!
Here is a copy of the letter I sent home to parents on the first day of school (click here if you don’t see a document below):
Here is a slideshow I found online to introduce Genius Hour to students (click here if you don’t a Google Slide Show below):
Here is a copy of the planning document I gave all 8th graders. They were to use this to figure out what to do, what to do with it, and how to proceed once they decided what topic to study (click here if you don’t see a document below):
Here is a rubric for the 20%/Genius Hour Projects (click here if you don’t see a document below):
Here’s a guide sheet for the Ted Talk students are going to give at the end of the year (click here in you don’t see a document below):
This document is special, it includes my notes on what teams have been doing and their progress. Teams have been sharing their topics and progress at the end of each quarter. Click here if you don’t see a Google Sheet below.
I highly recommend giving students the time to engage in Genius Hour type activities. Kids really enjoy and appreciate the time to work on topics that interest them and they are eager to share! Do you have your students do Genius Hour? What have you tried that works well for you? Or what you tried that we should avoid?! 🙂
