“How do I write my own book?” ... ...“How do I illustrate my own book?”
Samantha* and Sydney*, third and fourth grade students, began developing their questions for Genius Hour independently. It wasn’t long before they discovered that they shared a congruent focus. They teamed up and began brainstorming what it was that they could do to build their book project together.
After exploring their initial questions, they were led to several more:
What should we write about? … We don’t have a topic yet.
What kind of art do we want to create with our writing?
What tools do we want to use to do the job?
Are we building a real book?
Or are we creating a digital book?
Who is our audience?
A quality inquiry question will lead to several more questions that require students to consider the depth and scope of their project. Based on the answers they find to each of these questions, they may also make changes to the central question of their project. Since the project is of a passion-based nature, the student should continue to find motivation and interest in the answers that they discover.