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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?
Middle School Form Challenge
By Gordon Grisé, Program Manager, The Institute at Havergal
Middle School students work on projects of their choice during Middle
School Form Challenge mornings.
“
“
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
SPRING 2017 •
TORCH
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The Institute at Havergal