Genius Hour Implemented in Harrison Avenue's Fourth Grade Classroom

Fourth grade co-teachers Lauren Fahey and Lauren Dermody at Harrison Avenue Elementary School carved out a unique learning opportunity in their classroom called “Genius Hour”. The idea was inspired by a concept implemented at the search engine Google that allows its employees the opportunity to spend 20% of their time to work on any passion project that inspires them. Google’s policy has worked so well that it has been said that 50% of Google’s projects, such as Gmail and Google News, have been created during this creative time period.

“These projects are creations made by passionate developers and we hope to instill the same type of passion for learning in our students,” said Lauren Dermody.

The Harrison Avenue teachers believed that providing their own students a block of time to investigate a passion or an interest of theirs would promote innovative thinking and provide students an opportunity to develop skill sets that are valuable in any learning situation such as research, experimentation, collaboration, creativity, problem solving and critical thinking.

“The Genius Hour is giving students authentic real world opportunities to refine the skills they are learning in the fourth grade,” said Lauren Fahey. “Students share their passion for a particular topic and in turn strengthen speaking, listening, and technology skills that we have been working on all year.”

Students began presenting their projects in mid-March and have continued through the end of the school year.