Genius Hour

Ready-to-Implement Units

Don't call it "Genius Hour" every year - make it unique and special! Could you call it Super Speeches? TedTalk Tuesdays? Journey of a Question? This will help keep students from checking out if they've had a negative experience with Genius Hour in the past. Having a "theme" each year also helps to hit more and different learning standards.
Teach a tailored mini-lesson each week - this will give students specific instruction and small goals to work on each week instead of leaving them aimless in their study.
Have a specific rubric that students use to evaluate themselves at least twice throughout the project
Set small deadlines throughout - When do students need to have a list of researched sites? What about sub-topic questions? Give students directions on when each part should be finished in order to keep from procrastinating and rushing at the end.
Set a lot of one-on-one conferencing - as many as you can squeeze in while students work. Some conference question ideas are listed below.