Genius Hour Projects are grounded in student developed driving questions related to what each individual student wants to learn about. When students are thinking about what they want to learn and formulating these driving questions it is very important to give student ample time to investigate align purpose to their questions.
AJ Juliani, fantastic educator and co-author of The Launch Book has developed what they coined 'The LAUNCH Cycle', which is a tangible way to immerse students, even younger ones into the design thinking process. There are many aspects of this book worth brining into your instruction. However, the component that directly correlates to Genius Hour is the 'Ask Tons of Questions' phase of the LAUNCH cycle.
When students are initially developing driving questions, they naturally tend to start at just skimming the surface level and not really thinking deeply about creating purposeful questions. Incorporating aspects of this design thinking, allows students to have the opportunity before Genius Hour is even launched to ask lots and lots of questions.
One of the practices to teach students to go deeper and tailor their thinking is to give them the time to do it. Everyday, for at least a month or so before the official launch of Genius Hour, you may want to consider implementing "Wonder Time". This time was 10 minutes everyday to do just that.... to wonder.
To kick off this 'Wonder Time', explain the importance of always asking questions. You may even want to sign some kind of promise as learners to never stop wondering. From there, have each student create a 'Wonder Journal', which is essentially a running Google Doc of questions.
Using the structure from The LAUNCH Book, it is recommended that you first give students the opportunity to wonder naturally with no prompting. These are the type of questions that will start off at the surface level, which is perfectly okay! Questions like Why is the grass green? or How fast do clouds move? For the most part, these questions are Google-able questions. So after giving them time for natural wonder, each week you can begin giving the students questions and prompts to help tailor their questioning and raise their awareness. Breaking down each week into the following focuses, taken from the LAUNCH book. These questions help students refine their questions and the last one (starting with a passion/interest lead perfectly into the launch of Genius Hour.
Natural Wonder
Everyday of the week students worked towards developing lots of questions based on whatever the focus was for the week. Below are some examples screen shotted from third grade Wonder Journals.
In addition to the questioning that will be going on during Wonder Time, you may also want to get students into the habit of expanding on some of these questions. An amazing quote from George Couros in his book The Innovator's Mindset is "What you learn is not as important as what you create from what you learn." A good practice during this Wonder time would be to have the students choose one of their wonder questions for that week, and expand on it. Students can expand on it by doing research, imagining solutions, and thinking deeper into the question and then creating something to share that knowledge. (Examples: Wonder Podcast or Wonder Blogpost)
After a few weeks of using this design thinking process to refine questions, not will students be ready to start Genius Hour, but they will already have a bank of well developed, purposeful questions to choose from. The level of thought and awareness that students will tap into by using this design thinking method will elevate their Genius Hour projects.
So if you have done Genius Hour for years, or are just starting it for the first time, advice to you would be this... don't rush the brainstorming process just to get to the point where they are starting their projects. Take the time and give your students the opportunity to develop lots and lots of questions. It will not only help them learn to love questioning and problem solving, but it will make it much easier for them to create their driving question for their Passion Project.
Remember that in a world where information is now common, questions are more valuable than the answers themselves. We want to provide our students with the instruction and opportunities to be flexible learners who not only think critically to solve problems.... but seek to find them.