Summarize the purpose of your Genius Hour project in 140 characters.
The purpose of our genius hour project was to inspire kids by bringing a new book to Woodland and learning more about writing along the way.
Explain the process of your Genius Hour project. Be reflective. Be contemplative. Explain and describe your journey. (No Less Than Three FULL Paragraphs.)
The process began with us figuring out what we wanted to create for our Genius Hour project. Once we decided making a children’s book would be helpful to the kids and to us as what we could learn from it, we got started right away. We had to decide how we wanted our story to be set up and portrayed. We wanted a smooth and funny story that the kids could laugh about but also learn a lesson from. Once we finished writing, we corrected the spelling errors and grammar mistakes, and began to illustrate our book.
We picked to write a children’s book because we figured it would be easy for us and we could make a whole series of books for our year of Genius Hour. However it is not as easy as it seems. You do not know what happens behind the scenes of writing a book and sometimes it can take authors years to write a successful one. We learned that you can’t just slap together a random plot, you have to make sure it’s something the kids would actually enjoy. Most of the time, children’s books have a hidden meaning. Usually they portray the characters sharing or learning a hard lesson. It is all about being able to do anything you put your mind to and helping people around you. The hidden meaning in our book is that you never have to face anything alone, there will always be people to help you through times in need. We also wanted to show that the characters could do anything they set their mind to and complete the task if they worked hard enough for it.
Once we completed our story we worked hard on the illustrations that we thought would get kids attention throughout the book. This was one of the most time consuming and difficult things we had to do to complete our project because we wanted every picture to intrigue the kids. For each page we included an illustration of what was happening in the story. At the beginning we thought that the illustrations had to be more in depth, and realistic, but we slowly realized that kids would probably enjoy more cartoon drawings that were not perfect.
The intention For Genius Hour is NOT only to learn, but ALSO to share your knowledge with others who can and will benefit from your learning. How did you share your learning? What do you hope the result might be? (No Less Than Two Full Paragraphs.)
To share our knowledge we planned on going to the Woodland Library and showing all the kids our book. Unfortunately, we did not have the time to complete our book and get it to Woodland within our time frame. We were hoping to go to Woodland, read our book, and have the kids answer a few short questions about how they felt about our story. This way it will help us learn and grow to become better writers as our high school career comes to a close in coming years.
Our group also had a weebly page for our projects that allowed our group to write about our progress of our book. We had blog posts about what was going on in the time frame we were given and we also made a Ted Talk. We shared our Ted Talk on our weebly pages and our classmates were able to watch them and learn about what we were planning for our Genius Hour and what we have already learned from working on our project.
If you could do anything different with your Genius Hour project what would you do differently and why? (No less than two full paragraphs.)
We love how our project turned out but there are changes we would have made to improve the production and time management. We would change production and time management because it would make our book creation more efficient and easier. Our group would change how we managed our time because we cut it close to the deadline of the project and sadly did not happen to complete everything we set out to accomplish.
We would have loved to share our book with the children at Woodland to give them something fun and enjoyable that the school would not have to pay for. We also wanted to create more than one book in our time during Genius hour. However, creating the story line, illustrating, coloring, and putting the book together took more time than we expected for only one book. We can not change anything as the year is suddenly coming to a close but this has been a great experience for us to learn if we happen upon Genius Hour in future high school years.
Reflect on what you did well during this Genius Hour process? Note your successes and accomplishments. (No less than two full paragraphs.)
We made a lot of accomplishments as a group but we did have our hard times. We managed to complete our book in the time given to us but still laugh and have fun along the way. We were struck by how long it took to create the book however and this offset our original goal of our Genius Hour.
Our successes from Genius hour included; creating our storyline, checking grammar, illustrating our own pictures, and putting the whole book together by the due date. We managed to create a storyline that would intrigue kids and help them learn a valuable lesson along the way. Our illustrations were also a huge accomplishment because they took up the most time out of our project and we like how they turned out. Creating our book was difficult but we still had moments where we were laughing and having fun at the same time.
The purpose of our genius hour project was to inspire kids by bringing a new book to Woodland and learning more about writing along the way.
Explain the process of your Genius Hour project. Be reflective. Be contemplative. Explain and describe your journey. (No Less Than Three FULL Paragraphs.)
The process began with us figuring out what we wanted to create for our Genius Hour project. Once we decided making a children’s book would be helpful to the kids and to us as what we could learn from it, we got started right away. We had to decide how we wanted our story to be set up and portrayed. We wanted a smooth and funny story that the kids could laugh about but also learn a lesson from. Once we finished writing, we corrected the spelling errors and grammar mistakes, and began to illustrate our book.
We picked to write a children’s book because we figured it would be easy for us and we could make a whole series of books for our year of Genius Hour. However it is not as easy as it seems. You do not know what happens behind the scenes of writing a book and sometimes it can take authors years to write a successful one. We learned that you can’t just slap together a random plot, you have to make sure it’s something the kids would actually enjoy. Most of the time, children’s books have a hidden meaning. Usually they portray the characters sharing or learning a hard lesson. It is all about being able to do anything you put your mind to and helping people around you. The hidden meaning in our book is that you never have to face anything alone, there will always be people to help you through times in need. We also wanted to show that the characters could do anything they set their mind to and complete the task if they worked hard enough for it.
Once we completed our story we worked hard on the illustrations that we thought would get kids attention throughout the book. This was one of the most time consuming and difficult things we had to do to complete our project because we wanted every picture to intrigue the kids. For each page we included an illustration of what was happening in the story. At the beginning we thought that the illustrations had to be more in depth, and realistic, but we slowly realized that kids would probably enjoy more cartoon drawings that were not perfect.
The intention For Genius Hour is NOT only to learn, but ALSO to share your knowledge with others who can and will benefit from your learning. How did you share your learning? What do you hope the result might be? (No Less Than Two Full Paragraphs.)
To share our knowledge we planned on going to the Woodland Library and showing all the kids our book. Unfortunately, we did not have the time to complete our book and get it to Woodland within our time frame. We were hoping to go to Woodland, read our book, and have the kids answer a few short questions about how they felt about our story. This way it will help us learn and grow to become better writers as our high school career comes to a close in coming years.
Our group also had a weebly page for our projects that allowed our group to write about our progress of our book. We had blog posts about what was going on in the time frame we were given and we also made a Ted Talk. We shared our Ted Talk on our weebly pages and our classmates were able to watch them and learn about what we were planning for our Genius Hour and what we have already learned from working on our project.
If you could do anything different with your Genius Hour project what would you do differently and why? (No less than two full paragraphs.)
We love how our project turned out but there are changes we would have made to improve the production and time management. We would change production and time management because it would make our book creation more efficient and easier. Our group would change how we managed our time because we cut it close to the deadline of the project and sadly did not happen to complete everything we set out to accomplish.
We would have loved to share our book with the children at Woodland to give them something fun and enjoyable that the school would not have to pay for. We also wanted to create more than one book in our time during Genius hour. However, creating the story line, illustrating, coloring, and putting the book together took more time than we expected for only one book. We can not change anything as the year is suddenly coming to a close but this has been a great experience for us to learn if we happen upon Genius Hour in future high school years.
Reflect on what you did well during this Genius Hour process? Note your successes and accomplishments. (No less than two full paragraphs.)
We made a lot of accomplishments as a group but we did have our hard times. We managed to complete our book in the time given to us but still laugh and have fun along the way. We were struck by how long it took to create the book however and this offset our original goal of our Genius Hour.
Our successes from Genius hour included; creating our storyline, checking grammar, illustrating our own pictures, and putting the whole book together by the due date. We managed to create a storyline that would intrigue kids and help them learn a valuable lesson along the way. Our illustrations were also a huge accomplishment because they took up the most time out of our project and we like how they turned out. Creating our book was difficult but we still had moments where we were laughing and having fun at the same time.