My Think Different BBoard

Change is good. A fresh start. Begin again. All those cliches went through my mind as I was setting up my new classroom in a new school. I arranged and rearranged furniture so students would be successful collaborators. I only brought in items I needed, so I was able to purge a lot of materials. But it was not just my physical classroom that was different. I was different. I think different now, all because of my Kenan internship. My mentor, Lee, was a model of what it meant to think different. I wanted to bring the new and innovative thinking to the forefront of my classroom and thus my students. As I scrubbed, lugged, sweated, moved books, desks and furniture before the kids arrived, I was even more excited to see if I could bring the innovator’s mindset into my third grade classroom.

The first visible change was to create a “Think Different” bulletin board. I printed a variety of quotes and pictures and used lots of bold colors to make this bulletin board be visible to all who entered my room. Think Different was the tagline that Steve Jobs used when he reinvented Apple. Will this be enough to change mindsets?

I had researched elementary schools implementing the Genius Hour that is part of the culture at Google. I wanted my classroom to be a space where kids could work together, or alone. Where kids could create with paper and pencil, crayons, or iPads. Where any kind of project is acceptable if the kids meet the class-created rubric. But, my classroom also had to be the place where math and reading and science took place. I was running into the space constraint. Then, I met our Tech teacher. She had been thinking the same as me, kids need a space to support collaboration. She transformed the old traditional computer lab into the iLab, an innovative space for student collaboration. She has bean bags, comfy chairs, large screens for kids to collaborate online, markers, pastels, desktops, a green screen, iPads, and LEGO bricks. WOW! Just what I was looking for! Not only the wonderful space, but I met a colleague who had similar ideas about innovation!! I knew this change was headed for greatness!

I scheduled the iLab for an hour on Tuesday mornings. I really wasn’t sure how this would work, but I do not need a drawn out plan, I am usually good at adapting to the situation. We were studying the human body, so I decided to set up the Genius Hour as a project about the skeletal and/or muscular system. I provided a variety of types of projects and let the kids chose their partners. Genius Hour was off and running!

Did it work? YES. Did the kids learn something? YES. Did they have fun? YES. Did it meet my expectations? YES and a little no because there is always room for improvement,

Here is sample of the variety of projects my Genius’s did:

The Human Body Talk Show

A group of students chose to research how the body moves and bends when doing gymnastics. They created a poster to highlight the main facts. Then, they did a gymnastics demonstration (in the iLab) and one student would point out the movement of joints and muscles.

A pair of students wrote a skit about bones. They worked together writing, editing, and practicing their play. They performed it
to an engaged group of peers. For the ending, the girls set up two chairs and said they were now on a talk show (like Ellen) and were going to interview each other about what they learned. I loved that idea!!

Several girls got together to create a rap and a dance about bones. I admit, it could have used more information about bones, but they LOVED making the song and dance. They practiced during recess and any time they could. One girl in the group is extremely shy. The other members passed a note to her (that I had seen) saying that she didn’t have to get up and perform if she didn’t want to. The shy student said that she wanted to do the song and dance for the class. And she DID! I asked her if I could share her challenge to dance in front of the class with her peers and she said yes. The kids said they didn’t even notice she was nervous when she was dancing and singing! What a great success story!!

A group of boys spied a box of LEGOs in the iLab. They were itching to build a truck and they quickly got to work. I reminded them that this was not a play time, but a science project showing what they know about the human body. One boy quickly said that they were going to compare the human body to a fire truck and the others nodded in agreement. I must admit, I was doubtful they could pull this off. But, part of student discover is to let the kids design and lead their learning. They worked more on the truck, it seemed. Finally, it was the day to present and the Fire Truck Boys headed to the front of the room. We were all speechless as they compared the axels, tires and wheels to shoulders, joints, feet, and toes. They identified parts of the fire truck and compared the way it worked on the truck to a part of the body and how it worked the same way. WOW!

Fire truck hose like our arm, elbow and muscles.

So, my first focused Genius Hour is in the books. I was thrilled at the cooperation and learning that went on. There are kids that were not successful, too. I know that I need to help them understand how to think and create their learning. I am not going to spoon feed them. They need to do it on their own and then they will own their thinking.

Sometimes, a new school and new grade is the best way to get an experience teacher to be a new teacher.