Genius Hour for Grade 1/2 students
by Amy Bowker
July 12, 2015
I love the idea of incorporating student voice and passions with learning in my classroom. Doing Genius Hour with any primary class would be difficult since they are just learning their language skills. There is no better time to hook students on reading and writing then including their passions into our classroom learning.
I decided to change the normal Genius Hour format so that my students could still learn about anything they are passionate about and be able to share their learning with the class.
Step 1: Print many of these blank booklets for your students to fill out and staples them together.
Step 2: Meet with your student and ask them what they want to learn about.
Step 3: Go to Wikipedia and type in what they want to learn about.
Step 4: Print if they are advanced in their reading level or go to the left sidebar and scroll down to Languages and choose Simple English. This will take their subject of interest and create a simpler to read text.
Step 5: Give them a highlighter and get them to highlight the important information.
Step 6: Students will create sentences and pictures based on what they learned.
Step 7: Share with the class, school or the world!
Here are some examples from my Grade 1/2 students. These are posted with their parent’s permission.
