GENIUS HOUR PROJECT

SHARING GENIUS HOUR PROJECTS:

Expanding and improving upon the drop-off/pick-up & parking area zone

Hi, Emily and Maya here, and our Genius hour project is about improving the school’s drop-off/pick-up area along with adding more parking space. The reason for this project is that in the mornings and afterschool, there is a least a 10 minute wait in front of the school to be dropped off or picked up (for the students) by the parents waiting in a line –up in their cars. There is also very little parking space, and this is due to the fact that our school is made for about 1000 students, and currently, we have 1500 students, increasing the school’s desired population by a quarter the amount, and decreasing the amount of space for cars and pedestrians (children) to be able to arrive at school.
Our intentions are to expand the front lanes at the front entrance of the drop-off area, and to add another section for parking, so that the drop-off/pick up area will be more organized, as well as allowing students to arrive to school on time.

This project appealed to us from our own experience of being late or at risk of being late to class, as well as our peers. This is a problem throughout all the grades in our school that cannot be tolerated anymore. Teachers have gone so far as to no longer blame the traffic for the students’ lateness, but have taken to saying that the traffic in front of the school is inevitable, and should always be taken into consideration when coming to school. Do you also have problems with your school’s drop-off area, for example, no parking for cars or traffic in the mornings or afterschool?    

For presenting our project we are going have a presentation on imovie  (a program similar to powerpoint for making slideshows but it revolves more around video and audio) as well as a small speech that we will give during the video to stress out our points and explain information during the slideshow. For the imovie presentation we have interviewed parents, teachers, and students and asked them a few questions on their opinion of the school’s current drop off/pick up area and parking situation. We have gathered information from the students, but not yet from the teachers and parents. However, we already have the imovie and speeches all planned out, and we still would like to add in a map of our to-be-improved school drop off/pick up area as well as where we would have added in additional parking space.
So, in short, we currently have all of our information and planning finished, now we must finalize our good copies that we will present.


Genius hour in general is a free-reigned project that students can come up with independently. It can be about anything that they have an interest in or about something they would like to find out whether the teacher will give them an option, a theme, a smaller topic that they can choose an idea from, or they can brainstorm the idea on their own. This project allows students that want to learn about something (topic)  that they have an interest in so they can learn about it through the process of completing the project.


After reading our intentions/motives/progress, is there anything that you’d like to comment about our presentation? Perhaps, things we should add in to improve and to pinpoint the details in our project all the more? Any feedback? Please let us know! :)

    Thank you!

Sincerely,
Emily & Maya
the Firehawk Gazette