Genius Hour Presentations

Today I had the pleasure of viewing stage 3's Genius Hour Presentations; I was immensely proud of all they had achieved this term and the explanations they were able to give about their learning. 

Thank you to all the parents, grandparents, siblings, teachers and fellow classes who took time out of their busy schedules to drop in and see the projects! Your presence meant a great deal to the students and also helped raise the overall level of achievement as students worked for a genuine audience. 

Genius hour is a unique opportunity to practice key skills such as research, critical thinking and creativity, whilst fostering an enthusiasm and love of learning. Students selected an area of their choice and learned for the sake of learning - with enthusiasm! In the excited chatter this afternoon plans were already being made for what to do next time! 

Brandon explaining how he built his coffee table!

Bri trying out a face cream sample on Georgia!

Livia demonstrating her knitting technique.

We loved seeing what people in other classes had done!

Hayley sharing her learning about the human heart.

Some excellent animations were created using Flash and PowerPoint. 

Payten had researched how to make bread and then brought in samples. The cheese and bacon roll was delicious!

Cooper explaining his project to Elijah.

Logan encouraging a friend to come and see something he had learned from Connor!

Brock explaining what he'd learned about solar panels - his windmills successfully turned when placed in the sun!

Our Junior School friends loved investigating Chaye's Tek Dek ramps.

Naomi demonstrating her experiment.

JS students exploring Lachlan's blog.

Mrs Todd and 3T came to visit - thanks for coming! 

Brendan playing guitar and Kai playing drums created by Brendon, in order to provide some musical entertainment.

Daniel and Jake enjoying Jeremiah's presentation.

Ethan explaining his research on Lego bricks and how he'd created them.

Maddie demonstrating her plan for getting around Disneyland - we can't wait to hear how this goes in action!

 Pastor Elljay came to see our presentations as well - thanks for coming!

Max's skill tester proved to be quite challenging but very addictive!

Further musical entertainment was provided by Teagan, who had a song list to make requests from!

Kai explaining his research about techniques for throwing a frisbee and Nicole explaining her research about Special effects in movies.

Viewing Liz's explanation and examples of the use of photoshop - the before and after pictures were certainly eye opening!

Daniel amazing us with his card tricks!

Jake explaining how each of the parts of a motorbike work. His explanations and ability to explain it with a model in a way that made sense to an engine novice like me were certainly impressive!

Mrs Whitelaw viewing Joel's website - thanks for dropping by!

Miss Everett getting a tour of Daniels website.

4B also came to visit, as did Mr Nightingale - thanks for the support!

Isaac programmed a computer game using Scratch, possibly a future computer programmer in our midst!

Isaac reading a peers learning journal to see what they had explored.

That skill tester sure was addictive - many returned determined to get that little bit further! 

Logan's Simpson's figurines.

Emily getting ready to undertake her egg test. We predicted whether the egg would break when padded with feathers...

It didn't go quite as planned and practiced but still generated much interest and hypothesising from the gathered crowd!

Isabelle's cake testing had a line up before she even began! 

Mrs McGinnes, Miss Garcia, Mrs Rodriguez, Mrs Downes, Mrs Shabaya and 2/3S and Mrs Pope also dropped by! 

Once again thank you to everyone who could come by and make it such a great afternoon, and a massive congratulations to our stage 3 students!

What was your favourite presentation? What was the most interesting/ unique thing you learned? What was your favourite thing about doing Genius Hour?