I'm a firm believer in "sharing the wealth". So...how you will share your ideas with your colleagues? Was it helpful to read the three real-world examples of genius hour that Don shared? How have those changed or confirmed your thoughts about genius hour?
For next week we will read chapter 5, "Social Media and Teachers."
I enjoyed reading the real-world examples of the genius hour. However, this is not what I envision for my classroom. It is still hard for me to wrap my thoughts around exactly how I could use this in most of my classes. The Prob/Stats class really is the only class I can envision starting to develop the genius hour as I described in my post for the last chapter. It is an elective math course, so there is more time to explore different ideas.
ReplyDeleteThe genius hour and or innovation class is a wonderful idea that is essential. We need to start adding courses like this to the school's curriculum. I can see an innovation class easily being an elective like Kendra described for the MS. However, for core classes that have high stakes tests involved, I know I would have a hard time trying to fit the genius hour into the curriculum. There is so much material and skills to learn in Calculus that I had to flip the classroom to fit in time for notes and problem solving. I am going to keep trying to think of small ways I can incorporate the genius hour into my courses. It may have to be the genius minute at first until I can come up with some innovative ways to include it!
Sandy...I love it.."genius minute". Could this be incorporated as a bell ringer activity?
DeleteAngy...good idea to see if a genius minute could be used as a bell ringer...I'll be thinking about this and maybe this would be a good place to try some innovation
DeleteThe bell ringer idea was exactly what I was thinking! Five or ten minutes adds up quickly when students have this amount of time every day. Maybe start by giving them one "real world" math challenge at the beginning of the week that they need to solve by the end of the week. Once they do this for several weeks, try to get them to create their own "real world" math challenges to share with their peers. Then, once they are successful with this, move on to something a bit bigger. If I could speak intelligently enough about higher level math, I would try to generate some challenges myself, but alas, my disastrous year of Trigonometry ended my aspirations of being a math teacher and prevented me from taking Calculus the following year.
DeleteAfter reading this chapter, I would like to get some creative ideas on how to encourage problem solving and collaborative activities in my classroom. With all the required standards and the pressure of scoring well on the approved exam, I don't know if I could justify the true genius hour projects, but maybe I can incorporate more creative ways to work in groups, and/or more creative ways to teach the content using activities where students have to learn by discovery.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteWhen I was in high school, I was part of a group called "Future Problem Solvers." It was an after school club that worked through the problem solving steps. Once a year, we submitted our ideas for a competition. (I don't remember if it was a regional/state competition...that was 25+ years ago.)
DeleteAn innovation club would be different than the future problem solvers in two distinct ways: 1.) We were given the problem to solve and 2.) We had no mentors.
I attended the first day of Digipalooza today and one of the recurring topics was sharing our knowledge with other educators. I currently share information via Twitter, email, and basic conversations. I'm also exploring the process of starting a blog.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I use these methods to share lots of information besides just Genius Hour and Innovation Club/Class, I believe that a large collaboration circle helps me be a better educator.
The real world examples confirmed my thoughts about Genius Hour and an Innovation Club/Class. I especially liked the middle school example because the teacher integrated the concept into her existing course.
I like seeing the real world examples. It gives me a visual idea of how I can apply it to my class. If I do it though I want it to help the community, the students, and the school. I feel if the students help any of the above three out they feel better and more responsible. They should allow them to flourish and some of our students need that feeling of importance or belonging.
ReplyDeleteI love sharing the wealth. I was very lucky to be able to have a teacher in another district help me out this year. He has always had high ISTEP scores and he gave me a few lessons to get me started. I didn't know what to expect, but I know that if we would have taken it the scores would have been great. The students learned so much this year.