Cultivating Lifelong Learning

One of the best things to witness in the classroom is students owning their learning, displaying passion, and showing excitement towards what they are doing. This is why we do Genius Hour in sixth grade. Every Wednesday, sixth graders spend one hour learning about something of their choice. Their topic is chosen based on something they’ve always wanted to learn more about or a problem that they want to solve. The end goal is that they create a product to share with our school and beyond.

Genius Hour is off to a great start this year! We’ve had three productive sessions focused on defining passion and brainstorming ideas. As a grade level, we came to consensus on what passion means and what a person does, says, thinks, and feels when they are passionate about something. We then spent time generating topics and narrowing down ideas. Below is a windowpane we used to rapidly generate topic ideas. Students brainstormed independently and then heard ideas from peers. So many great interests and curiosities were shared during this time.

We will complete three rounds of Genius Hour this year. Each round includes work time as well as reflection time, which gives students time to process how things are going and plan their next steps. This is providing them with opportunities to develop skills necessary in self-directing their own learning and persevering to accomplish goals.

The culminating event at the end of the year is a Genius Hour fair that allows the students to share their Genius Hour projects. Students, teachers, and 6th grade families are invited to attend!