Genius Hour Blog - Week 5

Hello Friends,

    Welcome back to 'Teaching with Miss G'! It is so great to 'see' you again. It is hard to believe but we are officially on the final week of my Genius Hour Series. Time truly does fly! If you have not been keeping up with this series thus far, I recommend reading my previous four blog posts to get caught up to speed. 

    To provide a quick summary, for my Genius Hour Series, I came up with the driving question: How can I, as a future education, integrate literacy strategies into the classroom that equally benefit all types of learners? My goal was to find hands-on, integrative literacy exercises that could be adjusted in the regular classroom for students with exceptionalities (including giftedness). I also wanted to find ways to incorporate interactive strategies for literacy both in virtual and face-to-face teaching contexts. Finally, I wanted to provide resources for other teachers that are hoping to create a more inclusive, equitable literacy and language arts classroom. 

    With these goals driving my research, I quickly found the theory of 'Universal Design for Learning' (UDL). At the heart of UDL is the ultimate drive to make the provide instruction that meets students where they are. This instruction considers individual students' needs and strengths as well as their unique interests when planning lessons. UDL also demands multiple forms of expression, action, and representation in the classroom. 

    My research and goals led me to determine what my final product for this Genius Hour Series would be. I decided that I would create a resource guide with the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Differentiated Instruction (DI) at the heart of it. This guide would contain multiple literacy exercises that could be used within the classroom and may be easily modified or accommodated to meet the needs of all learners in that class. I am so thrilled to say that I have finally completed this guide and you can check it out for yourself here!

    While I have reached my goal of completing this guide and I am feeling ecstatic about this, I wanted to take some time for reflection on my product. I learned a lot about Universal Design for Learning while completing this project and I am so grateful that I took the time to research such an important component of teaching. I also learned a great deal about resource creation and making activities that are effective for learners. I had the fortune of being able to test my literacy products on the students I tutor (some of whom having learning differences) and this assisted me a lot in determining what works. I was also able to get continuous feedback from my students, which helped a great deal along the way. 

    My Genius Hour Project is now complete but I do still have some work and continued learning to do. The first step of this continued work would be to expand on my resource guide and add in a section for digital learning activities. While this was one of my goals for this project, this was something that I could not get to this time around due to time constraints and not wanting to sacrifice the quality of that section. Another step would be to add in further literacy sections in terms of writing, comprehension, and specific fluency instruction. 

    With all of this being noted, I am extremely proud of my final product and I do hope that you all check it out. If you have any questions or comments, please leave those below. I would love to read them!

Until next time,

Emily