Genius Hour

Genius Hour Reflection Post Week 4

Welcome back! This week is my last genius hour reflection and I have mixed feelings about it. I've learned a lot over the past few weeks and I'm sad to see it come to an end but I'm determined to continue to reflect on this experience and use my experiences to an advantage in my teaching career!

This week was about science so I tried out some new art activities. I got to combine science and art and realized it was a little trickier this week to find resources online that weren't going to make a mess! Since I'm not in a classroom setting, I had to pick activities that were not going to require any liquids or strange materials -that meant no oil and water art activities!
I switched things up a bit this week. The past few weeks I did not refer to the Ontario curriculum directly, but instead looked at an overview. This week I decided to create the majority of my activities by looking at the science curriculum for grades 1-7. Most of the activities had the theme of classifying but with different themes. For example, grade 7's classified abiotic and biotic elements, grade 6's classified vertebrates and invertebrates. The outcomes of these examples can be seen below:

 

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, October 3).

Ayaan- Grade 7 science. [Personal Photo]

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, October 3).

Omair- Grade 7 science. [Personal Photo]

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, October 3).

Faiza- Grade 6 science. [Personal Photo]

 These students learned a lot about their given topics. Some were introduced to it at school while others were not sure. These would be great activities for a review about abiotic/biotic elements or invertebrates/vertebrates.

In keeping with this classifying theme, I also used the Ontario science curriculum to create activities about solids, liquids and gases for grade 5's, and carnivores, omnivores and herbivores for grade 4's. Pictures of these activities are included below:

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, October 3).

Vinujah- Grade 4 science. [Personal Photo]

These students were really excited about being able to colour or create their own examples of solids, liquids and gases. Even though Vinujah is in grade 6, I gave her the grade 4 activity that she wanted to do. She reviewed her understanding of omnivores, herbivores and carnivores. This proved to be a good idea because she learned some new things about different animals and their eating habits despite being in a higher grade.

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, October 3).

Kain- Grade 5 science. [Personal Photo]

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, October 3).

Nerenya and Navanya- Grade 5 science. [Personal Photo]

I received a lot of compliments this week about how much fun the activities were even though they were learning at the same time. The solid, liquid and gas activity is better suited for an introductory activity to get students thinking about the three states of matter.

For grades 1-3 I looked at the science curriculum to come up with activities that were still engaging for students of this age group. Since they tend to lose focus, I tried to keep the activities simple and quick but still effective in allowing them to learn something new. Grade 3's were going to label parts of a flower after creating their flower. Unfortunately, I did not have any grade 3 students this week so I was not able to try out this activity. Grade 2's created a life cycle of a butterfly, and grade 1's did a leaf rubbing. I added to the grade 1 activity by creating cut outs of the different parts of a leaf. These activities can be found on Pinterest here.  Here are the results of these activities: 

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, October 3).

Ayan- Grade 1 science. [Personal Photo]

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, October 3).

Niko- Grade 2 science. [Personal Photo]

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, October 3).

Ishaan- Grade 2 science. [Personal Photo]

The leaf rubbing was a lot of fun to do. Students learned how they can put a leaf on paper and learned about the different parts of a leaf. The grade 2 students had a lot of fun learning about the life of a butterfly and did so by using a paper plate and making their own representations of the eggs, caterpillar, chrysalis and butterfly. 

Thoughts:

Overall this week was a lot of fun. I wasn't that interested in science when I was younger but I hope that by using more creative activities like these can encourage students to become interested in science! It was a challenge not to be able to do a lot of cool science activities I found that involved using water. If I was in a classroom, I would be able to have more space and resources to be able to do some of the messier activities in a classroom. 

Digital Learners: 

This week my class looked at a lot of learning objects by exploring some different ones. All of them were related to technology and I saw myself using some of these learning objects as a tech-enhanced activity. One I was really interested in was Screencast-o-matic which is used to produce a screen recording to demonstrate a technical skill or process for your students. This is easy to use for when I want to demonstrate something for the class to learn how to do. Another one I was interested in was Socrative which is a tool that quickly assesses students using questions which helps the teacher get insight into student understanding. A lot of these questions can be formed as a game where students compete to win by answering the most correct answers. This creates a healthy competitive aspect in the classroom. In my placement there are 4 house teams (similar to Harry Potter) and I can incorporate this aspect into the classroom. My students would be able to connect what they learn in school with their placement on a house team.

I also learned about something called "Haiku Deck" which is essentially an exciting way to show a presentation to a class. I could have used this resource this week for my genius hour activity by classifying animals, showing life cycles or presenting the parts of a flower. This would have been a fun and quick teaching presentation that students could have viewed before doing the art activities.

Here is an example of a slideshow I created using Haiku Deck to help explain the cycle of a butterfly to grade 2 students:


The Life of a Butterfly - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

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Genius Hour Reflection Post Week 3

This week was probably my favourite week of trying out new art activities. I might be a little biased. Okay, I'm really biased--I got to combine two of my favourite things: English and art!

I found when I researched things on Pinterest this week, there was a lot to choose from. I even had some of my own ideas! Here are some resources I used that I put together on my Pinterest board. Some things that I used were not from Pinterest. I've been starting to try to use some of my ideas that I think of. 

One thing I decided to do was pick a poem (one for a grade 1 level, and one for a grade 6 level) for students to read. Students needed to identify nouns, verbs and adjectives, then draw a picture about what the poem's main idea was. I'm learning that I have a lot of access to different resources that I could use or tweak to make it my own! Here are examples of a grade 1 and a grade 6 student who did the poem exercise: 

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, September 26).

Vinujah- Grade 6 Poem art. [Personal Photo]

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, September 26).

Nandita- Grade 1 poem art. [Personal Photo]

While both girls did the same exercise, Vinujah's was more to her age level because it was a longer poem that needed to be read multiple times in order to draw accurate pictures that connected to each stanza. Both girls said they were challenged by this exercise because they do not do that much poetry in school but that they found it exciting that they could draw pictures and learn about nouns, verbs and adjectives or refresh on them.

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, September 26).

Zain- Grade 4 acrostic poem. [Personal Photo]

I also created one other exercise on my own which required students to write an acrostic poem using their name. Students needed to use words or phrases that described their personality or interests. I decided to guide this exercise more for the grade 4 level.

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, September 26).

Thanus- Grade 4 acrostic poem. [Personal Photo]

The biggest critique I got for this activity is that Thanus thought it was too easy. This is something to consider for next time. Perhaps I could try giving them a different kind of poem that requires a structure or a specific rhyming scheme. Although he said it was fun to draw things he likes (or dislikes like in Zain's case), it was good to know his opinion on the activity so I could make adjustments for the future. This taught me that it's important to challenge children even though it's an art activity. 

The other activities I decided to use Pinterest as my inspiration. Some students needed to create their own stories: 

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, September 26).

Niko- Grade 2 story writing. [Personal Photo]

Niko, a grade 2 student, was able to create a story about a princess being saved from a tower. He wrote the sentences himself and drew the pictures. In this exercise, he learned about story sequencing of "First...Next...Then...and Finally." He acknowledged this order and always made sure he went back to make sure he was writing his story in the right order. 

Some students were required to create a monster and write adjectives to describe it:

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, September 26).

  Sanjna- Grade 3 adjective monster. [Personal Photo]

Sanjna, a grade 3 student, created a monster and described it using adjectives. In this way, Sanjna and other students could practice using adjectives by making something creative and then describe it. This could be helpful for narrative writing. She appreciated the connection between English and art in this case and loved being able to create whatever she wanted. 

Some students got to create their own comic strips using many of the conventions of narrative writing (a beginning, middle, and end) and also some comic strip conventions such as pictures and speech bubbles to tell a story:

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, September 19).

  Saim- Grade 5 comic strip. [Personal Photo]

Saim enjoyed using one of his favourite series, Captain Underpants, as inspiration for his own story about a mean principal who gets turned into Captain Underpants. It's exercises like this that I get to see creativity come to life!

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, September 19).

  Omair- Grade 7 media collage. [Personal Photo]

A grade 7 student was able to use media such as magazines to make personal connections in the form of a collage. He was instructed to cut out pictures or words from popular magazines to make a collage about himself:

This was an exercise that he enjoyed doing because he could see that magazines could represent yourself if looked at it in pieces or small sections instead of larger pictures of advertising methods. 

With the help of Genius Hour, I've been able to connect more with creative methods of engaging students into learning new things. This week students did a lot of review of concepts that they've learned in the past or they learned entirely new things like nouns, verbs, adjectives and story sequencing. I'm slowly learning that students teach me as much as I teach them in the sense that I am able to do things because they give me valuable feedback to be a better teacher. With that in mind, I've become more open minded to things like art activities which extends into things like using technology in the classroom. I'm understanding that like technology, art can be used in the classroom as a resource for creative expression and as a platform for presenting knowledge. 

Next week I'm going to be exploring whether it's possible to implement art and science together.
I'm excited for the challenge!

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Genius Hour Reflection Post Week 2

This week I explored my second week of my genius hour activities by researching about how I could implement art and Geography. I was never comfortable with geography in school so I found this week more challenging than last week when I researched art and math activities. After a couple hours of research using Pinterest, I discovered that I could frame a large majority of my activities by exploring different areas of the world.

Some areas I explored were India, Japan, Egypt and Africa. I also explored different types of art such as Aboriginal pointillism. Some major topics I covered were hieroglyphics, topography and mapping. All of my resources I used (and tweaked a bit) can be found on my Pinterest page here.

For Grade 1 students I decided to have them create their own African tribal masks and taught them about different materials that would've been used to decorate these masks such as feathers. I decided to tweak this activity that is shown on my Pinterest page to include feathers to make it more accurate. The student was then able to decorate the mask any way she wanted. This is her result: 

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, September 19).

  Nandita- Grade 1 African mask. [Personal Photo]

She said the activity was fun and colouring although she didn't like the fact that it was messy--I'm sure some students would actually love that factor!

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, September 19).

  Tawhid- Grade 2 Koi fish. [Personal Photo]

For Grade 2 students I decided to have them create a koi fish from Japanese culture made out of tissue paper glued onto a toilet paper roll with googly eyes. Here was a decorative fish:

For future reference, I want to be able to hang the finished product around the classroom or even hanging from the ceiling so that kids can appreciate seeing the culture around them!

Grade 3 students learned about topography by making a 3D figure of a bird's-eye-view of a mountain landscape. This was the result:

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, September 19).

  Sanjna- Grade 3 topography. [Personal Photo]

Sanjna had a familiarity with bird's eye views before so she learned something new by applying it to topography. She said she liked learning about topography! In the future, I want to be able to use styrofoam or multiple layers of cardboard in between each layer in order to show that its more 3D. Perhaps I would even label the layers for different altitudes to emphasize the geography aspect.

Grade 4's took a creative trip to Egypt to learn about hieroglyphics. From the Pinterest page, I found an easy alphabet symbol page that students would be able to copy to spell out their name. I told them to construct a bookmark that they could use on a daily basis when reading! 

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, September 19).

  Neijitan- Grade 4 hieroglyphics. [Personal Photo]

 Both boys said they really enjoyed learning about the symbols (even if they can't remember what they're called) and that they came from Egypt! In the future I might be a little more explicit and say that the symbols should be going vertical rather than horizontal so that the students can read it when the bookmark is upright.

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, September 19).

  Thanus- Grade 4 hieroglyphics. [Personal Photo]

Grade 5 students took a trip to India when they learned about henna and created their own henna designs on the outline of their hands. A lot of the students who did this activity were already familiar with this culture but one student in particular said he enjoyed learning about something new: 

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, September 19).

  Kain- Grade 5 Indian henna. [Personal Photo]

Kain and the others enjoyed being creative. Some identified that they were a part of the culture, while others identified that their cultures were very similar. Kain learned about a whole new culture that he has not been exposed to before. He enjoyed colouring his picture the most. I really enjoyed this activity! I might change it to include two hands rather than one. 

Grade 6 students looked at Aboriginal pointillism art. They traced a choice of three leaves and were instructed that they were not to colour by dragging the marker or pencil crayons across the page. Instead, they needed to put dots to colour in an area. Here is an example: (due to time constraints, she coloured the background and only dotted the leaf)

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, September 19).

Vinujah- Grade 6 Aboriginal art. [Personal Photo]

Vinuja learned about Aboriginal art (she didn't know much about Aboriginal's to begin with) and she connected how the art project connected history with nature. With more time, I am confident she would've gotten a completed outcome! 

Lastly, for Grade 7 students, they demonstrated their understanding of mapping skills by creating their own island in the shape of the letter of their first name, and created a legend and a compass. Here is one example: 

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, September 19).

 Omair- Grade 7 'O' map. [Personal Photo]

Omair created an 'O' map for his first name and created a legend and compass. He used basic shapes to represent things like houses and forestry. With more background knowledge about mapping, I am confident that his map could be more descriptive and organized.

Thoughts:

This week I learned that students are at different stages despite their grade. Some students excelled in some activities that might have been too simple for them, while others struggled in other activities fit for their age group. 

I've also learned that there are so many ways that you could implement art into geography even if it's just exploring a different area of the world! I only picked a few but other places I could've explored could've been Canada, Mexico and Australia. Through this experience I've learned that I'm more patient when it comes to administering art activities because I know that some kids need more help than others. I also identified that some activities need to be adjusted in order to fit time constraints, skill level and prior knowledge.

Digital Learners:

This last few weeks we've worked with a lot of movie creation sites such as PowToon and iMovie. I created a PowToon to present an introduction of Genius Hour and an iMovie to present a sneak peak of my digital hour question. I am finding that some sites (not just the ones listed) may require more practice than others. This means that some can be used effectively for beginners such as iMovie and some can be used effectively for those with more experience such as PowToon. I also learned a lot about using technology with English this week and created a procedural powerpoint and a BioPoem. I am excited to be able to implement these strategies with Language arts in my placement class since it's a tech school! I feel like they would be able to connect to the curriculum more using their devices whilst studying English. And on that note, 

**Next week I will be looking at using art with English!

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Genius Hour Reflection Post Week 1

Welcome back! 😊

I completed my first week of my genius hour activities! The tutoring centre I work at has many grades represented so I thought it would be a perfect place to implement my activities. This week I focused on math and how I could create art lessons out of it. I focused on grades 1-6 this week since there were no older students to try activities with.

Many of my activities were found on Pinterest. It is a really helpful site to help with trying new activities in the classroom! Through this research, I was able to pick a few activities that I felt were pretty well rounded. I picked some that had to do with patterning, measurement, number sense and numeration, and geometry- this represented most of the math strands.

I've pinned the activities I decided to try on my Pinterest account that can be found here. I will be using Pinterest to document which activities I will be doing each week. There are also pictures of the activities below for your convenience:

The Imaginationbox. (N.d). 'Hidden ModernArt Football'
 colouring activity. [Pinterest Post] Retrieved from

thismamamakesstuff.com (N.d.).
[Pinterest Post] Retrieved from

Ricca, Nicole. (N.d.) [Pinterest Post] Retrieved from

Walshaw, Jen. (2013, July 23). Maths and Art
Collide= Parabolic curves. [Pinterest Post] Retrieved from

Pocket of Preschool. (2016, November 3). Camping
Centers and Activities. [Pinterest Post] Retrieved from

This week I had to create a media consent form for parents to sign. I wanted parents to be included in their child's activities by making them aware of what their children were doing. On the media consent form, I included a description of my Genius Hour research question, the activities that their child(ren) would be participating in on which days, and a description that included information on pictures that could be taken of the child which would be posted online. The parents had to choice whether they wanted their child's picture to be posted or not, and if they wanted their child to do the activities but not be included in any pictures. For the purposes of my research, all parents agreed to have their pictures taken and posted.

Friday September 15th was my first session with my students. Everyone was excited about what they were going to do because my manager had told them I'd be coming in to do something fun with them.

For grade 1 students I decided to do the patterning activity using bingo dabbers and stickers on white paper. Unfortunately I did not have any students in this age group but I decided to have Suven, who is in SK, try the activity with some adult supervision:

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, September 15).
  Suven- SK trying Patterning. [Personal Photo]

He started off his pattern pretty well but I think his excitement took over since the pattern became a bunch of blobs. Perhaps using the bingo dabbers was a little too chaotic for someone his age. He was given stickers, but instead of using it on the paper, he decided to stick them on himself. Again, could be because of his age.

After interviewing him, he said he had fun doing the activity and liked all the colours. I guess it was a success for him!

On a personal note, I would do this activity again!

For grade 2 students I decided to do the ladybug adding activity using construction paper, glue, scissors and markers. I had one grade 2 student try this activity named Bryce who had help from adult supervision (mostly when it came to cutting): 

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, September 15).
Bryce-Grade 2 Ladybug. [Personal Photo].

He completed the activity exactly how I had in mind which I thought was great! He understood how to draw, cut out his own shapes and glue them. It was his idea to add the face on the ladybug which I thought was cute.

After interviewing him, he said he really liked the activity but one thing he wishes he could have done was a different type of bug like a butterfly or a dragonfly. He would've loved to try doing a bumblebee!

On a personal level, I love how cute this turned out so I would do it again. However, I like Bryce's advice about trying to create different types of bugs-- this was a great idea that I didn't think of myself! I'm glad I interviewed all the students after the activity.

For Grade 3, I decided to do the overlapping shape exercise. I told students to try to draw as many shapes that they know to cover a piece of white paper. The point in this exercise was for them to utilize their geometry skills and measuring (for drawing shapes with straight sides), and overlap these shapes to make other shapes. Once they were done, they were told to colour them in. Below are some of the results:

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, September 15).
Ethan- Grade 3 Shapes. [Personal Photo]

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, September 15).
 Janu- Grade 2 Shapes. [Personal Photo]

Ethan decided to create what he said was a glove and a rocket ship with his shapes which took the activity into a creative one where he was able to use his imagination but also use math! Janu, who is in grade 2, wanted to try and challenge himself so he decided to do the grade 3 activity. He did the activity as I described it.

Both boys said they really enjoyed the activity- and Ethan even discovered that he loves colouring thanks to this activity! Ethan did say that one way to make it easier was to cut out shapes and glue it instead of spending time colouring the activity. Janu said he would prefer that the blank paper could be other colours instead of just white.

Personally, I really enjoyed this activity but I find it was a little too simple. I would try to make it harder and taking Ethan's idea of cutting out shapes but apply them in a form of a collage. This way, students would need to measure and make adjustments to their cut out shapes to perfectly math their drawn picture.

For grades 4 and 5 students, I decided to do the abstract image shape activity. Here, students needed to draw a picture and then try to camouflage it using different shapes to overlap it. I felt this was a more challenging activity than the previous one I mentioned. Here were the results:

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, September 15).
Zain- Grade 4 Logo shape. [Personal Photo]

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, September 15).
Nerenya- Grade 5 iPad shape. [Personal Photo]

These kids hid their image in the middle of the page (see if you can find it!) and used shapes to camouflage their shape. After interviewing the students, Zain and Nerenya liked using shapes and colouring them to make it fun. Zain suggested that to make it a more challenging activity, they could camouflage more than 1 object in the picture. Nerenya suggested that maybe they could use pastels or paint next time to do the same idea. 

As I was doing the activities, I thought of Nerenya's suggestion myself! I could see the potential in this being a painting lesson in class as well and I think it's important to include other elements of art besides drawing or colouring with markers/ pencil crayons! I definitely have to consider this if I decide to do this activity again.

Last but not least, for the Grade 6 exercise, I decided to do the complicated line art. Here, students needed to measure side lengths, measure centimetre increments and connect lines using a ruler. Here was the result:

Milhomens, Britney. (2017, September 15).
Shuveena-Grade 6 Line. [Personal Photo]

Shuveena struggled with this exercise at first so I sat next to her and walked her through how to do it by doing it next to her. This way, she was able to see what I was doing while I was explaining it so she could follow the instructions. I know this worked because I know that she's a visual learner from having taught her in the past.

After the activity, she said it was challenging but that once she got the hang of it, she was excited to see how it would turn out! I feel like the challenge sparked her interest in wanting to learn how to do it. In fact, after the activity, she asked if she could try to do the harder version of this activity (see activity pictures above).

I remember doing this art activity when I was in school and I remember thoroughly enjoying it so I was excited to be able to try it on my own students and will most certainly do it again! A slight change I might make though is using black paper as the background and chalk or pastels to make the lines more vibrant.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: 

At first it was really overwhelming to do the activities because there were a lot of different age groups that I had to cater to all at once. For this reason, it was good that I brought my little sister with me to help! I told her what to do and set her up with the grade 1-2 kids. I learned that art and math truly go hand in hand this week and there are so many other activities that I could try with virtually any grade and any math strand!

For next week, I will be researching art activities with geography intertwined. This one I've been nervous about because I don't have many ideas in mind (other than colouring maps), and I don't want to make things boring! Wish me luck!

DIGITAL LEARNERS:

This week my favourite activity we used was the survey from Google Docs. I found it really quick and easy to use! I'll definitely use this in my classroom as a homework "check" or even as an exit ticket for understanding. It's really convenient to use particularly with older grades that have more access to technology to access it online.

Another really cool activity we used in class was a Plickers activity where the teacher scans the students' personalized barcode to see their answers up on the screen. This could be done anonymously or teachers can see what students answered. I found it really cool and thought instantly that I would be able to apply it to my teaching particularly for answering questions in class (especially for students that are too shy to answer verbally) and can also be used for comprehension of the material.

This week I'm feeling a lot more positively about educational technology. I'm discovering that not everything is completely difficult to navigate and there are some really cool activities that I could implement in my class. From now on I'll keep my mind open to other things and not shut out technology completely!

Week 2 Progress to follow!

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Genius Hour Reflection Post 1

I am on the road to embarking on a fun and interesting journey!

Before this class, I had not heard of Genius Hour but I've discovered that it is a way for students to use their creativity to explore their own interests or passions during a set period of time at school. I've decided to embark on something I've been passionate about for a long time-art. I explore a lot of different art techniques and it was always one of my favourite subjects in school. However, I never found that any of my elementary school teachers emphasized art or very many art activities outside of the minimum required for grades. 

My question requires researching and experimenting how I can incorporate art activities into other subjects in school that students or teachers would not necessarily think to put together. This week I am going to start with research on art and how I can incorporate it with math. I was never enthusiastic with math classes--in fact, this hasn't really changed. I always found it boring or absolutely confusing!

However, I think if math used art to demonstrate some concepts, I would've had fun and probably could've also retained more information. My hope is to make math fun but also encourage creativity in the classroom! Art may be the key to motivate students into wanting to do math. 

In the past two weeks, I've learned a lot already about different types of technological tools I can use in the classroom. I've never used Google drive before but thanks to my Digital Learners course, I see the value in being able to pull up documents on any computer at any time. This makes it easier for teaching in the classroom. I no longer have to bring my laptop or a USB to display presentations. Instead, I can log onto a computer (if one is provided) to present a video or slideshow from google. 

We have also been introduced to Pinterest and Twitter. I've been a long time Pinterest user so I was familiar with this tool. Twitter, on the other hand, is a foreign concept to me. I have never had a personal Twitter account and never intended on having one. I don't think I would use Twitter for elementary school students but I might use it in a high school classroom. It could be used to mark participation in the classroom by having students answer a question during class which could engage them in the lesson. I could also use it as an Exit Ticket. Before a student leaves my classroom, I could ask them to give feedback, ask a question or answer a comprehension question. 

As I journey through my Genius Hour topic, I'll also be on a journey of discovering new technology and learning about it. I am not very savvy with technology but things are starting to click (no pun intended) and I'm excited to learn more about tools I can use in the classroom!