Two of the biggest changes I've made are implementing Genius Hour and Online Homework. Both of these new programs give students more choice in regards to their learning and both required a lot of planning to implement successfully.
Genius Hour
We started Genius Hour during the second month of school. It was scary to take time away from traditional classroom instruction and allow students so much freedom, but it has been an amazing experience for both my students and myself. We spend one hour every Friday allowing students to follow their passions. Students research a topic of their choosing and can work in groups or individually. Students must create a product/presentation to share their new learning with the class.
So far this year, students have studied:
- jewelry making
- hairstyling
- computer programming
- pyramids
- volcanoes
- electronics
- movie making
- stop animation
It's been amazing to watch students learn with excitement! I absolutely LOVE Genius Hour. Next year, I'll be changing the title to Wonder Workshop. I think it fits better with my classroom environment. I'll add more posts soon about Genius Hour with specifics about how we started it in our classroom.
Online Homework
In November, I started playing around with the idea of having students complete their homework digitally. We are a 1:1 school, so our students do a lot of their learning online and it was starting to feel a little ridiculous that students were doing paper-pencil homework that didn't really align with
how we were learning in class.
My first step before starting online homework was to survey the parents. My survey including questions such as:
- Do you have a computer or tablet at home?
- Do you have internet access?
- Are you interested in having your child complete homework online?
- What questions or concerns do you have about online homework?
After having buy-in from about half of my class, I had to find the best platform for our online learning space. I really liked some of the features of Google Classroom, but it seemed to be lacking in the area of keeping parents involved, which is essential to the success of online work for second graders, so I quickly crossed that one off my list. I also explored Edmodo, but just couldn't get a good feel for it. I finally settled on Schoology, which was a great choice because my county had already created usernames and passwords for all of our students, so that was one less step for me to complete.
Next, I began using it in class and teaching students how to use it. Then, I invited parents in for an orientation, so that they would become familiar and be able to help their child if any questions/problems arise. At the parent orientation, I gave a short spiel about why we were doing online homework and then turned it over to the kids who in turn taught their parents all about Schoology. It was awesome! Kids were teaching their parents about our online classroom and the parents were so impressed that their children were so knowledgeable.
Last week was our first full week of online homework. We hit a couple of bumps in the road, but we worked through them and this week should go a little more smoothly.
So you may be wondering what type of homework I assign through Schoology. I'll share specifics in future posts, but for now, I'll say that I give choice, so students have 2-4 choices each week. They only have to complete one assignment, but all choices are available to them if they'd like to try more.
Wow! Talk about a long post!! I'm going to try to be better at posting weekly. I'd love to hear what you are doing that has forced you to let go and give the power of learning to your students.
No comments:
Post a Comment