20% Time, Genius Hour or Student Choice. I call it "My Interests." Part III of III

Part III of III

Any instructional strategy or method can lose its charm or effectiveness over the course of a year-long course and having alternative options for students helps to keep the course exciting and new for everyone involved. Below are a few options I have experimented with and enjoyed implementing last school year.

Option 1:
Part of Friday "My Interest" became a show and tell or how-to time where I would call up students to explain exemplary work and how they made their project using tech. The students were honored to be the ones leading discussion, they competed to be the next ones to get to be the example and they taught me new technology along the way.
*Note: In the beginning of the year I would model some technology for them and give them some ideas on how to use the technology.

Options 2:
Other ways I utilized "My Interest" days was to have students "huddle up" with similar projects. So, if three students worked on organized crime they huddled up to discuss what they learned, used their devices to look at each others work on Edmodo and discuss and comment. Then, as a class we could have each group report back on what the learned as the "experts" on their topics.

Option 3:
To change it up, on Fridays of my choosing I would have a representative from each topic get with other topics so that there were people in your group that had not studied the same topic and they could ask you questions. Meaning that each a group had someone that studied organized crime, flappers, prohibition, ect. Each student in the group became the expert on their topic. We would almost always come back as a large group and have a class discussion of the chapter.

The fun, exciting part as a teacher was that every hour and group was unique. I enjoyed being able to walk around the room and participate in group discussions with each one presenting me with new challenges!



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