Using Genius Hour to Meet the Needs of Gifted and Talented Learners

The prompt for Day 9 of the giftEDnz Blog Challenge is all about Genius Hour which I'm a HUGE fan of, although most of my Genius Hours have usually turned into Genius Day...or Genius Week... (and sometimes Term...)

The prompt asks us to look at the resources in the crowdsourced resource from the Gifted and Talented Teachers (NZ) group and choose one (a challenge in itself) to share and reflect on how it would work to meet the needs of our gifted and talented students.

Gifted and Talented Teacher (NZ)

There are some great resources in here and it's being added to all the time by group members.

Genius Hour Resources - A crowdsourced collection of resources for learning and teaching

The one I've chosen to reflect on is a presentation created by Patricia Chiles from Anaheim Elementary School District in the United States.  This is one of my favourite resources because she begins with the 'why' which is something I always begin with for all learning and teaching.

Genius Hour - Patricia Chiles

So what makes Genius Hour so powerful, particularly for our gifted students?  Along with the 'why?' in the image above it offers:

• A chance to drive their learning in areas which they are passionate about
• The flexibility of timetables - the learning drives the timetable
• Authentic contexts that can connect to the real world.
• Can be asynchronous - anytime, anywhere learning - when it really takes off
• Students can choose to work with others or on their own (important for many gifted students)
• A chance to collaborate with like-minds at their level (also vital for gifted students)
• Offers depth and complexity in the curriculum - students can connect with experts and take the learning as far as they want to.
• The curriculum fits the learning and the learning drives the curriculum - not the other way round
• A powerful way to let the Key Competencies drive the learning (the original intent of the New Zealand Curriculum
• Empowering and creates ownership of learning 
• Encourages and supports true differentiation of content, process and product - learners have agency in that they are able to have choices in all of these areas with the support of their teacher.

There are many more reasons but, for me, these are the main and most important ones and the ones that have always driven student learning in my learning environments.  What else would you add?  There is a wide range of resources in the crowdsource collection to spark your imagination and understanding of genius hour.