There's something about being outdoors that is good for the soul. Thankfully, I live on the west coast of Canada so there are easily a half-dozen beaches within a ten-minute drive from my house, and they are stunning. Every time I go, there is something new to explore and discover. Biodiversity is a key part of our grade 3 science curriculum here in British Columbia and, between you and me, it's one of my favorite units to teach. There is just so much to unpack and the science lessons lend themselves so beautifully to student-centered learning. Take a peek at my ideas, activities, and tips for teaching biodiversity (the diversity of life) in elementary science.

Biodiversity: Lesson ideas, projects and freebies that teach all about our great big world.
Image: a globe is pictured falling into a pool of water.

keep the biodiversity local

We always study our local biodiversity. While teaching about biodiversity in Africa may seem exciting, (yay for lions and tigers and zebras!) there is so much biodiversity in our own backyard. Teaching about the local diversity of life helps to give my students an appreciation for the plant and animal life that exists right where we are!

get outside

I like to teach our biodiversity science lessons when the weather is most likely to be nice (although, on the wet west coast, nothing is guaranteed), so that we can head outside to try and observe biodiversity in our own schoolyard.  

A number of times throughout the unit we will take a walk on our school grounds or in the neighborhoods surrounding our school. If your school policies allow this, a neighborhood walk is a free and fun field trip! We will head out with cameras or sketchbooks to make notes of the many different plants and animals that we observe on our way.  My students are often so surprised at the wide variety of bugs/insects/plants/birds that they can find in just a short 20-30 minute walk.

If you are able to bring a couple of smartphones (I had parent or high school volunteers come for this), the app Picture Ths is great for identifying local plants. If this isn’t possible, the app also works from a picture! Students can snap photos of local plants near their homes, and you can identify them using the app at school from submitted photos.

follow student passions

Towards the end of our study of biodiversity, we move to student-led learning. After students are familiar with ecosystems, food chains, living and non-living things, and the components of our local ecosystem, it’s time for a little project-based learning.  I let each student pick which part of our study of biodiversity interests them and RUN with it.  I once had a student do a project on a species of local moss... not my first pick but it made him very excited to research!

Students zero in on one specific plant or animal and do more in-depth research.  They place their subject into an ecosystem, learn about its place in the food chain, discover its diet, and explore any predator and prey relationships that it is a part of. The student becomes THE classroom expert on this plant or animal.

Image: An animal flipbook project on brown bears is displayed on a table. A flipbook rubric is behind the brown bear project.

We use my digital and printable animal research templates to complete these projects.  It ends up being so fun to watch students dive deep into something they care about.  At the end of the unit, we work together to come up with a way to share their learning.  Some years we do formal presentations.  Other years, we set up a ‘gallery walk’ where other classrooms can learn a bit about each animal.  My personal favorite was the year we filmed each student presenting their animal like they were the host of a Discovery show, and compiled all of the presentations into a class movie! 

Let us plan your biodiversity unit!

Looking for a whole unit? This complete biodiversity science unit features nonfiction reading passages, vocabulary, teacher-led lessons, project-based learning, a guided inquiry project, small group projects, and detailed teacher instructions all along the way.  No planning needed, just print and that’s it!

grab the whole unit!

“This fits in great with the BC Grade 3 Science curriculum. My 3s are enjoying the activities and I like that there are reading passages with questions for them to answer. So far we are half way through the unit and everyone is excited when it is time for Science! Thanks!” - Denise M. (A real-life teacher using the Biodiversity Science Unit in her classroom!)

Hooray!  If you’re here, you have successfully planned your first Genius Hour, your Genius Hour time is running smoothly, and you are ready to think about presentations! Your students have answered an essential question and are the proud owners of new knowledge.  Now… what are they going to do with it? One of my favorite stages of Genius Hour is the final presentation. Not every classroom conducting Genius Hour requires a final presentation, but in my room, it’s an important way to share our knowledge with the whole group.  Read all about our Genius Hour presentations, and how I set students up for success. 

Text: Genius Hour: Sharing Projects and Presenting Ideas
Image: Six lightbulbs in a row, the second one is illuminated yellow.

This is part three of a three part series on Genius Hour. Don’t forget to check out Part One: How To Get Started With Genius Hour in Lower Elementary, and Part Two: Classroom Management During Genius Hour.

Why do a formal Genius Hour presentation anyways?

The whole point of Genius Hour is to learn about a topic that each student is passionate about.  However, I like to encourage students that new knowledge should be shared.  This is a great way to share their new knowledge with a wider audience.  These ‘formal presentations’ can take a variety of forms, they don’t necessarily have to be a ‘stand and deliver’ traditional presentation.  A student who learned a new skill (to play the guitar, to paint using a new technique) might demonstrate this to the class, another might press play on a video that they created during Genius Hour time, and a third may choose to do a traditional spoken presentation. The point is giving students a chance to share their learning!

Prepare students ahead of time

Giving students time to prepare their presentations is key.  I include this as a part of our Genius Hour time.  If you’ve read Genius Hour: Class Management with Quick Check-Ins, you’ve seen my 3-stage method for Genius Hour. After students have completed their projects, they move on to preparing and practicing their presentations. This stage is so important because it helps to build confidence so that they are ready to share with a real audience come presentation day. 

I also make sure that the actual presentation day is not a surprise.  Using a large anchor chart paper, I set out possible presentation days well in advance. I  spread presentations out over 3-5 days so that students aren’t overwhelmed listening to so many presentations back-to-back.  Then, I let students choose their own presentation day to give them some ownership over this process. 

Invite a Real Audience

If possible, invite a real audience to come and listen to your class give their Genius Hour presentations.  I like to place the presentations at the very beginning, or very end of the school day to give parents the greatest chance of attending, but I know this isn’t possible for many families.  Having a buddy or peer class attend can also give your presentations a real audience! 

Add a Q&A Session

Before presentations begin, I give each student a small paper where they can write down 2-3 questions about each presentation. (This is included in the Genius Hour pack). After a presentation, the presenter hosts a quick Q&A session with the audience. I find that these Q&A’s are invaluable for a couple of reasons.  First, this task helps to keep my audience of students a little more focused during presentations.  Second, it is helpful for my own assessment.  If the student studied polar bears, they should be able to answer “what does a polar bear eat?” If they learned to play a simple song on the guitar, the question “how do you strum a C chord” shouldn’t trip them up either. 

A Complete Genius Hour Plan is Here!

I’ve taken everything I’ve learned from years of Genius Hour and created a complete digital and printable guide to starting up this engaging project in your second, third, or fourth grade classroom. It has teaching guides, a week-by-week timeline, a sample day plan, project ideas, parent letters, student planning pages, rubrics, and more!

grab the whole planning pack

Have you started Genius Hour in your classroom yet? I’d love to know how it’s going or if there’s anything I can do to help!  Leave a comment below or connect with me on Instagram. 

A handful of years ago I did my very first Genius Hour in my third-grade classroom.  For those who have never heard of Genius Hour, it is a student-directed hour of independent projects based on their own curiosities. time  It gives students a chance to explore their passions and interests and allows them to develop a lifelong love for learning. Genius Hour also helps to hone research and presentation skills in a way that is 'outside of the box' and creative.

Genius Hour in lower elementary, creating life long learners.

Most of the blogs I had read ahead of time seemed to use Genius Hour in the upper elementary, middle, and high school grades.  Looking back, I wonder if I was crazy to try it with eight-year-olds. Maybe I was. At times, it was insanely chaotic.  I definitely 'bit off more than I could chew' and it was a lot more work than I anticipated. But it was such an overwhelming success with my students that I made it a permanent part of my third-grade curriculum and learned from the parts that I was ill-prepared for the first time around.

Most of the chaos and hard work came from being under-prepared.  I hadn't fully thought through what it would take to prepare seven, eight, and nine-year-olds for independent work.  

Yes,  they are capable of it... but it takes scaffolding and intentional instruction to give them the tools to succeed!  

So, learning from my mistakes, here are four tips for a smoother, well-planned Genius Hour in Elementary!

A complete plan is here!

I’ve taken everything I’ve learned from years of Genius Hour and created a complete digital and printable guide to starting up this engaging project in your second, third, or fourth grade classroom.

It has teaching guides, a week-by-week timeline, a sample day plan, project ideas, parent letters, student planning pages, rubrics, and more!

Grab the Whole Planning Pack

Model Everything

One of the most valuable things I learned in leading Genius Hour in third grade was to model all pieces of the process.  Instead of telling my students to “come up with a topic”, I participated in Genius Hour alongside them and verbalized my thinking process out loud.

"What kinds of things am I interested in, I'll write them down!  The ocean, hockey, running, cooking.  I love to build stuff.  When I was at the ocean I saw a family flying the most amazing kites, and they were doing loops.  It was so interesting."

I didn't just say, "List the things you are interested in," I demonstrated how I would come up with some topics. In future lessons, I explicitly taught how to turn my ideas into an essential question.

"I love kites and the ocean," became my Genius Hour question "How do you build a kite?"

Genius Hour is driven by an essential question that students work each week to solve through research and hands-on exploration.  (Each question cannot be solved by a simple Google search).

Eventually, I even gave a complete Genius Hour presentation.  This way, my students were not caught off-guard by what I expected from a presentation.  I built a simple kite in front of my students and showed what I had learned on a step-by-step poster.

This week-by-week timeline was my saving grace for staying on task for Genius Hour. It breaks down specific skills that students need to learn each week, and where their projects should be at any given time.

Narrow Down The Presentation Options

I have found that in older grades, students are so excited by the idea that they can choose any way that they want to show what they have learned.  The world is their oyster!

However, when I tried this in Third Grade, most of my class looked at me like a group of deer caught in headlights.  They were absolutely overwhelmed by the number of possibilities.

Should I do a poster?

What about a movie too?

Is a poster better than a movie?

I don't want to do a movie.

What if I code a video game?  I don't know what that means. But maybe my brother does.

Do I have to do all of the options?

I was ready to pull my hair out.  So we had a class meeting.

In our classroom, we decided that everyone would have a small poster (I bought the poster board) that showed what they learned, and then they could also have a small model or project if they wanted.

I would suggest narrowing down the options for how Genius Hour can be presented in lower elementary.  As always, allow some students to go 'above and beyond' as they are ready and feel prepared, but don't make this the standard for all students.

Use Simple Ways to Keep Students Accountable

Genius Hour is only one hour long.

It seems like a lot but it will fly by.  To keep students accountable I used a very simple Work Log where students simply answered the question "What did you do today?"  At times, all they would write down was:

I colored my poster.  And that was enough!  Don't waste valuable time filling in a work log when you could be working on Genius Hour.

Check with Parents

This was one of the things that I learned in retrospect.  I allowed students to choose any project of their choice without checking-in at home that each project was o.k. with their families.

It didn't go well for us.

Students assumed that they had access to a computer when they didn't.  Or access to a poster board when they didn't.  Or even a ride to the public library when they didn't.

This year, when my students create their Genius Hour plan, they will also need to have a parent/guardian sign off to make sure that their plan is reasonable.  I don't want to put any undue stress on parents or families and hope that each project is one that my students can do (mostly) independently.

Future years’ project plans had a parent approval and suggestion section!  Much needed after the first year!

Genius Hour planning pages, complete with space for parent or guardian approval!

looking for more about genius hour?

Keep on reading and learning about planning Genius Hour in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades with the rest of the Genius Hour blog series!

• Part 2: Classroom Management During Genius Hour: How To Keep Students On-Task

• Part 3: Genius Hour Presentations

Genius Hour is a hands-on, inquiry-based learning experience in lower elementary. Your students will be SO engaged.

I am a big fan of hands-on learning.  There is SO much research suggesting that when students discover things for themselves, rather than have all of the information ‘deposited’ lecture-style, they make genuine lifelong connections. There is no better place to conduct an investigation than outdoors, take a peek at how we used inquiry-based learning to explore the life cycles of plants in our third-grade classroom.

This spring, we are learning about plants through a guided-inquiry unit.  It is guided because I came up with the inquiry questions (true inquiry allows students to come up with their own questions). 

We began by learning some vocabulary and key plant terms.  Then, I posed the question: “How do plants grow and change?”  I put the question on a blank bulletin board, and left room for us to answer as we moved through the unit.

Guided inquiry cards  (Pictured above - included in the whole packet)

Instead of handing them a worksheet with the answers, we began to plant! We planted beans, lettuce, scallions, marigolds, and pansies. Each student cared for an individual bean plant, and tracked its growth, changes, and how they cared for it.  In groups, they took turns being ‘gardeners’ for our group outdoor garden. 

There were so many great AH-HA moments as we used our hands-on garden as the focal point for our learning, and I think we learned more from our mistakes than successes!  My students knew the concept of photosynthesis, but only truly understood the importance of green leaves when their plants were munched by local deer!

We finally figured out why plants need sunlight after our blinds were accidentally closed over the weekend and our plants sat in the dark for 72 hours. 

We tracked the changes on our plants, and marveled at how resilient our bean plants were! 

We could not believe at how our teeny-tiny seeds turned into edible pieces of lettuce!

I cannot tell you how many parents have sent me e-mails or stopped in to let me know that they now have small gardens in their houses/apartments that are being tended to by my third graders.  It makes me smile to think that what we are learning in the classroom is already turning into out-of-school continued education! 

I’ve gathered together my whole unit into a ready-to-go packet that you can pick up on Teachers Pay Teachers.   It has everything you need: vocabulary, life cycle worksheets, inquiry questions, student notebooks, and two experiments. 

Check it out here:  ALL ABOUT PLANTS, inquiry-based science

If you try it out, let me know what you think!  Have your kiddos discovered their “green thumb”? 

- Rachel