Adventure learning begins

Our school is doing a show in term 3 so planning for this term has revolved around flexibility, the music teacher and reduced time. Having seen the success so many were having with Adventure Learning/GoogleTime/Passion Projects I thought that the timing was right for something different.

Reading blogs, tweets confirmed that the beginning of the project would be crucial, I needed the children's buy-in or this would be wasted effort.  I was pointed in the direction of the Geniushour website and found this to be a valuable source of info for a newby, the key advice being start with suspense, passion and the rules.

Before the term started I posted a little slideshow on the class blog, had the rules ready to go and wrote all over the windows of the classroom. The key message was "Anything". When the class came back to school some had seen the post, others were confused  and wanted to know what this was all about... Why was the word "Anything" all over the window?

Slide show suspense from reidhns1

During week 1 we also watched several Kid President videos which got the class really excited and we started to share some passions and possible topics using Padlet.

Created with Padlet

The kids are now working in their own time and during class on their projects. But it hasn't been without problem:

1. Problem: Some can't come up with a project. Solution: 1 on 1 with teacher, talking with members of class. Tweeted suggestion: talk to them about some real hands-on stuff. This worked, 1 is now looking at house design & building, the other helicopters
2. Problem: Timeline/Expected completion date/ teacher expectation. Solution: Short of saying "is this what you want to share/learn?" I'm not sure about this. Guess I'll find out as we go.