Genius Hour: brainstorming

A while back, we talked about Genius Hour, and I challenged the students to think of some things they might like to learn more about. Today, some of the students shared their ideas. Some of the ideas were spot on, and some needed some tweaking - they were either too narrow in scope (something that could be done with a 30-second Google search), or too broad (one of the students had the idea of researching the human body - that could take years to do!). The next step in the process (after the rest of the students tweak their ideas) is to figure out a way to share their learning with their classmates (we'll be looking at that in the next week). In the meantime, here are some of the ideas that the students are thinking of, for their first Genius Hour projects:

- Cavemen (how they lived, hunted, dressed, etc.)

- Skinks or Komodo dragons (lizards in the wild)
- Snakes (how they shed their skin, eat, move)
- a history of cameras (interested in film cameras)
- how people might be able to live on Mars
- pioneers (how they lived, traveled, etc.)
- different ways Christmas is celebrated around the world, and what they celebrate where they don’t celebrate Christmas
- tigers (different kinds, evolution, how many are left, what they eat, etc.)
- monkeys (different kinds, what they eat, what they do, etc.)
- the Internet (how/when did it begin, what exactly it is, etc.)