Personalisation – a k a Genius Hour
I have talked about becoming a facilitator in Blog #1, Student’s Choice in Blog #10, and finally Individualisation in Blog #12. These steps needed to be taken and a lot of teaching experience needed to be collected before I was ready to conduct a class of autistic teenagers with extremely diverse backgrounds, sitting in the same classroom.
I am not going to account for the various problems some of these students had, but I will explain how we all ended up learning, each in our own personal ways.
After some struggling weeks, I gave the students a Choice Board. My goal was to have them choose a task that they felt at least comfortable with despite their disparate starting points when it came to these four factors: Interest, IT skill, Language level, and Inclination to challenge.
On Padlet, I presented an array of digital presentation tools, from PowerPoint to Voice Note and even an Avatar Speaker for them to use in case either writing or speaking would be a problem. I also helped them start planning their tasks with a mind-mapping program (that is no longer available).
By this time most of them had made a choice. Their choices stretched from I Am an Expert in Sleeping to I Am Interested in Space. A couple of them needed some coaching to decide what they would like to do, but in the end, they all had a task that felt meaningful to them.
My task, during the lessons, was to coach each student and discuss their work according to their needs and wishes.
As they all finished at different times, I gave them a list of websites they could use to practise their English language skills. Even there, they could all find their favourites.
With hindsight, this was my first attempt towards what is known as Genius Hour. I just called it Personalisation, as each student could work with what was in their personal interest.