Genius Hour Thoughts- January 27

The concept of 'Genius Hour' in the classroom across all grades is extremely exciting. On some levels, it goes against the very nature of what we as educators have learnt as 'best practice'. It eschews the idea that teachers have to give instruction based on a particular concept or topic and places that element of the lesson solely on the students. By doing this it somewhat changes the the notion of what we usually qualify as 'teaching'.

Genius Hour allows students to choose what they would like to learn about by asking a rich driving question (something that can't just be searched through Google with a one line answer). This changes the emphasis of the outcomes as the process of learning is placed at the forefront rather than being topic content driven. 

With our Year Six students, I believe the best way to implement Genius Hour will be by talking about the origins of the Genius Hour concept and show how a real life tangible product (GMAIL) came out of this simple idea of giving people a chance to follow an interest. The next phase will be to discuss how to come up with a rich 'essential question'.