Genius Hour Launch and Lock

   by  mrsdkrebs 

So I've been composing my documents to support teachers in Genius Hour and thought I should go through the fabulous Live binder of Genius Hour Documents curated by Joy Kirr and start curating a few of my own ideas of how I would launch Genius Hour in my classroom.




1. Play Genius Hour video that I created to generate enthusiasm.

2. Review the following Powerpoints to get acquainted with Genius Hour.

Genius Hour Presentation Student RCSD

Genius HourTeacherLibrarians

3. Get students to start brainstorming some of their passions and things they care about. What would they like to learn more about if they had time. What question is a "big", deep, thought-provoking question about their topic. How will they carve out the essential question. I think I would use Langwitches blog to assist in formulating questions...

4. Present an "elevator pitch" for a project. This is an idea that comes from Kevin Brockhouser's blog, "I think, I Teach"
"What is an Elevator Pitch? can be summed up as follows...

The term comes from the notion that an innovator with a great idea might find herself in an elevator with a powerful investor. She has a very short period of time to convince this investor to buy into her idea. She needs to deliver an elevator pitch.

For their Genius Hour projects, students must prepare a pitch about their Project in 30 seconds. Then deliver their pitch to the teacher in the form of a podcast (use tablet record devices). It follows the model established by a cheesy video from YouTube explaining an elevator pitch.

I also like some of the resources from Mr. Baroody's blog , The GA 20 Time Beta Test

Pitches Should Include:

1. Why is it worth my time to learn about this?
2. How is it going to make a difference in the world? How will it inspire others to learn?
3. Do I realistically have the resources to learn about this?
4. Do I have the time in 8 weeks to learn about it?
5. Is my essential question or driving question too narrow or too wide?