A One Man Band Becomes An Orchestra

When I first began to investigate Genius Hour, I was excited at the prospects this PBL project could have in our small school. Like a one man band strumming a tune, I began to share my research and that drew in colleagues. We met, planned, and then developed the process we wanted to follow. Starting with two grades, 7th and 8th, we enlisted more members in Genius Hour, enlarging our band into a small orchestra. This month 6th grade eagerly joined the "orchestra" Genius Hour.  Last week younger students walked through the library and observed GH kids engrossed in their projects and stopped to watch. Soon, I was bombarded by 1st and 4th graders wanting to know what the kids were doing. On elf the projects, the building of a Minecraft server, has drawn in a lot of boys!

Excitement and curiosity throughout the school is building. Students are coming to us and asking when they, too, can participate in Genius Hour. The ultimate goal is to move Genius Hour into the classrooms in each grade. To foster the curiosity, creativity, life-skills, and intrinsic motivation, we have invited the 4th grader to lunch with the GH students and learn from them while they continue to experiment. The first grade teacher and myself have begun to schedule times when GH kids can go eat lunch with first graders and share their ideas, thoughts, and successes as well as answer questions. 

Genius Hour in our small K-8 school is proving to be beneficial even to students who are not yet participating. We are seeing kids learn how to persevere, share, ask hard questions, discover the freedom of curiosity, research and want to learn in a positive and supportive environment. 

Here are some of our cool projects that students are working on. 

Coding to the next level by Will

Building and learning to play a ukulele

Keep reading,

The Noisy Librarian