Torch - Spring 2017

The Institute at Havergal

Middle School Form Challenge By Gordon Grisé, Program Manager, The Institute at Havergal

I n its second year at Havergal, the Middle School Form Challenge provides students in Grades 7 and 8 with a chance to exercise their imagination and ingenuity through a series of self-directed learning opportunities. Modelled after Genius Hour programs running throughout North America and inspired by Google’s 20% Time initiative for their employees, the Form Challenge was a way that The Institute staff could encourage Middle School students to ponder about what matters to them and work on anything and everything they were fascinated with. The idea came from the Self- Directed Strategic Team and was implemented by The Institute staff, who set up the Middle School Form Challenge to take place during Form time (between 8:20 and 9:10 am) on eight Tuesday mornings during the year, which was time the students used to follow their passions and pursue project ideas they felt were important. Armed with an ideas notebook, which included activities aimed at helping students identify specific interests, and reflective guides to provide structure for each session, students took to designing a project, activity, item or event of their choice.

By clustering these Form Challenge mornings together, students were able to keep momentum from week to week by building off their successes and learning from their failures. One group even worked on a project called “Failures,” which outlined their Form Challenge journeys of unsuccessful projects. During these sessions, many of the students realized that their ideas would not work and decided to change their project ideas once, twice or even three times as their personal interests and understanding of various issues grew. At the end of each session, students reflected on the following questions in their ideas notebooks: • What did I learn today? • What did I make/create? • What did we learn from today’s successes and failures? • Did I accomplish my goal from the last Form Challenge morning? • What’s my goal for next Form Challenge morning?

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The Form Challenge was a way that The Institute staff could encourage Middle School students to ponder about what matters to them and work on anything and everything they were fascinated with.

—Gordon Grisé

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Middle School students work on projects of their choice during Middle School Form Challenge mornings.

SPRING 2017 • TORCH 33