In order to ensure that Genius Hour runs smoothly in your class, the following questions must be taken into consideration before starting the program.

How long will your program last and do you want to have a deadline?

Setting a deadline and holding a project fair is one way to organize your Genius Hour. Students then have the opportunity to display and discuss their projects with not only their own classmates, but also with other students and educators from their school. Parents and community members could be invited to the fair as well.

For some educators, holding students to a deadline may not feel like an appropriate way to organize their Genius Hour. The creative process is definitely different for everyone. Therefore, it may feel unreasonable to require all students to be at the same stage in their process at the same time. In order to accommodate this diversity, teachers can have students present their projects as they complete them. This may mean that a class has five presentations in one day or that a class may go three weeks without having anyone present at all.

Will you let your students work on ANYTHING?

The short answer should be yes. The main focus of Genius Hour is that it is inquiry driven, wherein students have the freedom to work on whatever interests them. However, if you don’t like the question a student chooses, be it inappropriate or easily solvable online, use your powers of persuasion to guide him/her to develop their question into something else. Remember, the most critical component of Genius Hour is ensuring that students formulate quality, thought provoking questions.

Will you allow your students to work in pairs or groups?

As this project allows for the exploration of a personal curiosity, it seems obvious to have students do it individually.  As students search to better understand their question, new questions will arise. It is hard to say whether this process can be genuinely shared. However, there are those students who strongly benefit from working with others and may share common interests. When organizing Genius Hour in a primary classroom, it may be helpful to have students work in pairs in order to avoid ‘hitting a wall’ during the research phase.