Building Outside the Blocks (aka BOB) is an approach I have developed to create opportunities for students to learn through personally meaningful projects. Students sign up to present their work, only a few per presentation date, so their audience of classmates can really appreciate and actively listen to each one equally. I am always interested in exploring new BOBs, but when I received a teaching assignment that included 2 new subjects and the entire Middle School to teach, I got right to work.
I had been on Twitter for only a few months before the term became inescapable: Genius Hour. My interest was piqued, but I let it simmer. I reached out to Kim Pollishuke who had already done a Genius Hour project in York Region and was becoming an important voice in education. She was generous and talked through many aspects with me, even though we had never met.
I didn’t know how I could make it work in a rotary system with so many expectations to cover. Since I was new to teaching Grade 8 Geography, I decided to use the idea of this innovation but tweak it to a BOB-style project. From explicit instruction, to the pitch, to blogging, to a TED-like talk, there were a lot of layers to build and a lot of planning required - it was worth every moment.
Building the Groundwork
I reviewed the curriculum and selected Sustainability as the umbrella topic because there were so many ways it could be a springboard. Then, I planned lessons that had 3 goals: raise awareness of the scope of issues under sustainability, help students put themselves in the equation, and help students find a focus about which they could become passionate. This was translated onto a graffiti board of thoughts, ideas, questions and areas of interest. We revisited our graffiti board often over a few weeks to add new ideas or refine already noted ones. By then, the students were ready to be assigned the next step.
The Pitch
The pitch was supposed to convince me, their teacher, that their inquiry question was focused enough and they had done enough research to be truly committed to intensify the exploration of their chosen topic. While there was mild overlap, each of the Grade 8’s had chosen a unique angle and worked diligently to pitch me their research questions. I filmed the pitches and emailed them to the students. Then, I conferenced with each student while the rest of the class continued their research. The students came to the discussion with their own sense of next steps. By viewing and reflecting on their pitches, each student could begin to articulate exactly how and where they needed to improve in terms of presentation skills, organization or content. When I sat down and asked them about their reflections, they had already begun owning their next steps. I often ended up merely agreeing with their self-assessments and adding to the feedback by guiding students to refine their questions or narrow the scope of the research. Then came the next challenge: blogging.
The Blog
I had committed to myself, and to the Twitterverse, that I would begin blogging this year along with my students (thus this and my previous posts). In order to introduce the medium, I showed the class a few different blogs and how they captured the writer’s voice. I had written the criteria in the assignment as 3 blog posts reflecting the process and content of their preparation for their long term goal: a TED-like talk called T-Time along with comments on at least 5 other students’ posts.
When I first told them they had to use blogging to track their learning, they were really perplexed. When one is on Twitter, there are so many insightful edubloggers and blog posts are so prevalent, it was hard to believe how new this idea was for my classes. This was really foreign to them and it took just getting started, letting them get messy and guide each other, to get my students into it.
In class and for homework, the students viewed different styles of blogs. The students then created a shared writing guideline for blogging, especially considering a potentially world-wide audience, that included such elements as:
write like you but more academically
spelling really matters because errors make people think you are hasty, careless or not that bright
OMG is not a reasonable comment because it does not show or tell anything of value
go for depth over breadth
Creating a chart with the guidelines as a shared writing piece and keeping it up in the room really helped the students clarify the expectations and helped me redirect them as needed.
So many of the students enjoyed the experience of blogging that some surpassed the requirements and are on their 9th post. Others started their own blogs, truly finding their voices through this medium. On the flip side, some of my students think blog is a swearword, but at least they know what they’re about. Blogging is an important experience for all learners to help find their purpose and voice.
T-Time Talk
With TED-like presentations called T-Time Talks (though some renamed them Tree-time) as the final horizon for the project, I had to make sure the class understood what that meant. The students viewed and responded to several TED Talks on various innovations related to the topic of sustainability. Some were better than others, so we broke down the success criteria and worked as a class to establish the various aspects on an anchor chart. We looked at the difference between a speech and a talk, how to use visuals with minimal text and how to incorporate videos to complement the presentation.
Results
T-Time Talks were presented over 6 weeks. Now that the students have finished presenting, I am reading student reflections and am blown away by the transformative experience that this has become, for them and for me. One parent even said, “I have never seen such personalized learning.”
Having my students complete a passion project inspired by Genius Hour using 20% of their class and homework time felt like a gamble at first, but it has already paid off in spades. While I called it T-Time, it truly doesn’t matter what you call it; just do it!
To learn more about Genius Hour and 20% Time go to:
Some student blog links:
