Genius Hour Update: Asking the Right Questions

We are a few weeks into our genius hour project.  Our students are in a junior learning strategies class and have varied levels of ability but all are enthusiastic about the project.  We are at the project approval stage but I want to take some time to get the students generating some focus questions.  I feel like I want to connect the projects to inquiry by using questions for focus.  I imagine that they will all look very similar but since I have these same students next semester as well, for the most part, I think it is a good time to plant the idea of generating questions to guide inquiry.

Once the questions have been set, it will be time to research and make lists of resources and materials they will need to complete the projects.  I am looking forward to getting the projects underway.

Academic Conversations

A few years ago, I took a MOOC from Coursera about Accountable Talk in the classroom.  It was interesting and I filed it in the back of my mind for use in a High School Classroom.  I recently bought the book called Academic Conversations by Zwiers & Crawford to take the next step towards really focusing my students when they have group conversations about a topic.

I am also interested in more inquiry in my English classes and I think academic conversations are a skill my class needs to work on before I really dive into their first inquiry activity (details in a later blog post).

I used to believe that students would naturally catch on to some things, like group conversations. However, over the years I have learned that sometimes you have to set out the rules for activities we teachers think are self-explanatory.  I am hoping that doing a few short mini lessons on the nature, rules and behaviours of academic conversations will help my students get more out of group discussions.  We are having our first book talk about The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie tomorrow and I am going to start with a short demonstrative video from the Accountable Talk course and then an overview of academic conversations before we begin.  I hope that this will help students to become better literature circle members and group members overall.

Wish me luck.