Genius Hour 2015

Welcome to Genius Hour 2015!

I hope that you have heard your child mention Genius Hour because that is all they can talk about here at school. 

Genius Hour is an activity Room 222 will be exploring for the next few weeks to build our knowledge on topics that are interesting to us. 

Check out this short video explaining Genius Hour:

Here is what our journey through Genius Hour will look like:

These are our accomplishments and stages so far:

1. Get your ideas - Students started by writing down all of the topics they wanted to know more about. 

2. Then, after a day or two to think, each students decided on one topic to focus on for several weeks. 

Then we began drawing and writing about what we already knew. We also started our wonderings and questions. 

3. We are currently in the Research and Take Notes stage. We are gathering inspiration, instructions and ideas from sites that we are exploring. We learned how to use KidRex.org as our kid-friendly search engine.  Through this stage we also learned how to evaluate different websites and decide which are good for us and which we should pass by. 

Room 222 has been doing very well and is extremely motivated and excited about their projects. Our project list is very diverse this year. Here are our student chosen topics for 2015:

How to Build a Model Train
Make a Model Shark
Robotics/Circuit exploration
Make the Best Milkshake
Make Fudge
Learn to Bake
Create Potions
How to Make a Tornado
Make our Favorite Minecraft Characters with Legos 


Genius Hour in Room 222 has several expectations:
1. Proper use of Technology and Materials
2. Showcase Research and Note Taking Skills
3. Information must be Shared with our Audience

Here are our first reflections on Genius Hour:

Genius Hours from LBright on Vimeo.

Please stay tuned for more information!

Collaborative Ocean Inquiry Learning

Last week we dove into a new project, Ocean Creature Inquiry Groups.  Based on interest, the students have joined a group to research a specific ocean creature. This style of learning will help us through the research process by allowing us to gather and synthesize our information and discuss it as a group. 

Along with the research process, group collaboration is the big focus. We have discussed that scientist, teachers, police officers and most other professions must work together in groups. We watched a few videos of scientists working as teams and discussed how we could do the same. 

We started our inquiry process by writing down all of our thoughts about our research creature. 

Check out this video from our first session:

Inquiry projects from LBright on Vimeo.

Then the students began to code their thoughts. They were to locate questions, wonders, noticings and facts that they already knew. 

Once they built their schema, the students began to research. One of our goals is to gather information using many different types of media. We will focus on our favorite online resource Pebblego, Youtube videos and books about our creature. We are charting this new learning on our information poster. 

Remember, collaboration and teamwork is the underlying focus of this research unit. Check out this video for example of amazing teamwork and knowledge sharing:

Collaboration from LBright on Vimeo.

As we move forward, we will continue to gather information and then begin the process of synthesizing that information into the most important. From there we will write our research papers.

Thanks for checking in!

A Little Bit of Writing and a Little Bit of Science

Well, I blinked and March is over! I can't believe it went by so quickly. 
For Room 222, March was filled with some very exciting and new academic challenges. Our current writing unit is taking us to new genre of writing, Opinions and Arguments. 

Throughout this unit, Room 222 students will be forming an opinion, supporting this statement with valid reasons and learning how to disagree with another person's opinion in an academic way.

We start this process by deciding which piece in our collection is the best or "the blue ribbon winner". We relate this to a dog show. The judges must score the pieces and decide which deserves the award. 

Here you can see a student's work and scores while still in the deciding process. 

This student has chosen to give stars to the cards based on different categories. The one with the most stars won the award. 

This student has picked his favorite winning piece and has started his opinion writing form.

We hope to show you more of our opinion writing at next week's open house!

Recently, our science study switched from Space to Oceans. 

We are starting by learning of the four layers of the Ocean: Tide Pool, Open Ocean, Ocean Floor and the Abyss. 

Following our study of the Tide Pool, the students explored the other 3 layers using food coloring, water and vegetable oil to help show the 3 color differences in the ocean.

After combining all of the ingredients and giving it a good shake, you can see the 3 separate colors that indicate the layers. 

Once our bottles were clean and oil free, the students used Sharpies to label the layers. 

Then, as scientists, we wrote and drew about the experiment and our observations. 

We will continue our Ocean studies through the month of April in many different ways. We can't wait to show you!

Week in Review

Have you ever wondered why our moon looks different at different times of the month?

One night you could see a big and bold moon and other nights you could see just a sliver.

Room 222 learned about the phases of the moon and even made our own models. 

We needed 3 objects: the earth, moon and sun. We used balls from P.E. class for our earth and moon. We used flashlights for the sun. The students worked to find dark places to create their models. They found that if they flip over a table, they get just the right darkness needed for a good photograph. 

They used these photographs in their informational moon movies. Those will be posted later this week.

The students also started researching self-chosen topics this week. We used two of our favorite websites to find information on topics ranging from Babe Ruth to Tornados to Golden Retrievers. PebbleGo.com and WorldBookOnlineKids.com are our must-have sites for research. 

As the students researched, they took notes on their note-keeping sheet. It was very impressive to see how hard they worked this week and how seriously they took their research.

We will now use these notes to write an informational paper that we will publish and celebrate!

Last but certainly not least, we had a room full of guest readers this week! 

We LOVE a good story!

Thanks for checking in!

Meet Miss Conley

I am excited to be working in Room 222! Here are some facts about me that I would like to share with you all!

• I am a student at NIU and will be graduating in December.
• I have three nephews so I love to spend time with them!
• I will be going to the Shedd Aquarium in March to meet some penguins and I am very excited about that!
• I have been in elementary classrooms since I was a senior in high school.

I am very happy to be working in such a wonderful classroom this year! I can't wait to learn from both Mrs. Bright and the children through this journey.

iMovie Experts

Sharing our learning is an essential skill in Room 222. Not only is true comprehension reach by sharing out your learning but all great ideas are influence by another great idea. 

We have been studying the Solar System by focusing on the Earth, Moon and Sun.


Room 222 recently participated in an iMovie challenge within our 6 table teams. The goal was to communicate and teach using the information we had researched on the Earth unit. They were given a time limit of 2 minutes, 30 seconds and were allowed to use any app or tool that would help enhance their presentation. Here are our 6 amazing videos:

The Earth -jaguar from LBright on Vimeo.

The Earth from LBright on Vimeo.

The Earth from LBright on Vimeo.

The Earth from LBright on Vimeo.

The Earth - Dolphin Group from LBright on Vimeo.

The Earth from LBright on Vimeo.

We focused this project on the 4C's:

1.Comprehension - I understand the information.

2. Communication - I can share clearly with my audience.

3. Creativity - I kept my the attention of my audience and made it interesting. 

4. Critical Thinking - I thought about the best way to share my learning. 

The groups are teaching us about:

• Rotation causing Day and Night
• Revolutions causing Seasons
• Colors of the Earth
• Fun Facts

The students did an AMAZING job. It was really fun to watch these during our viewing party on Friday. We hope you like them too. 

Week in Review

It was nice to have a 5 day week. We took advantage of the time and worked on a few projects and invited in some guest teachers. 

We started our week by doing some blogging about our writing. Each student is working diligently on an informational Earth book. Our focuses are elaboration, vocabulary and details. Several of our Room 222 students went on Kidblog and shared a page they were really proud of. Check out their work here. Keep an eye on our Kidblog page. We will have more bloggers this week. 

In addition to writing about the Earth, the students are working in groups to plan an informational video about the Earth.  The focus is collaboration, planning and accurate information. 

They planned and made sure that all of their "domain specific" words were clearly explained in their videos. We are finishing them up this week. 

Friday was a very exciting day in Room 222! We were lucky enough to have two guest teachers. 

The first was Mr. Drendel, our amazing P.E. teacher. He joined us as a "How-To" writing expert. Part of informational writing is not just teaching someone all about a topic, we also need to teach people "how-to" do things. 

Mr. Drendel walked us through the steps of juggling again and helped us plan our "How-to Juggle" papers. He used a cool app that allowed him to slow the video down and find the important areas of our body for juggling. We found the midline and saw that he was making small circles with his arms while juggling the scarves. 

We then began practicing and writing. 

Lastly, we had Mr. Berger join us to share some information on Owls. Mr. Berger is a raptor expert. He has worked with eagles, hawks, falcons and owls. One of his favorite activities is "owling", where he sits quietly and waits for owls to come to him. He uses his owl calls to attract them. 

He talked to us about the wingspan of the Great Gray Owl. It can be up to 4 feet wide!

One of the most interesting facts was about Owls and their 3-D hearing. He taught us that the Owls have ears in different places on their heads and this helps them locate prey with just their hearing alone. Mr. Berger said that you can blindfold an owl, place him in a dark room and the owl will catch it based on hearing alone. 

With this information, I'll bet we have a lot to write about this week!

Please leave us a comment. We would love to hear from you.