This week I tried hexagons with my students. It worked really well.
The beauty of following inspiring educators on Twitter is that you benefit from their ideas and knowledge. I first saw Hexagon learning on @jivespin’s blog, which led me to David Didau, NoTosh, SOLO (HookEd), Chris Harte and TheLearningGeek. All explain how these versatile hexagons encourage deeper thinking and rich conversations in the classroom. Hexagon learning can be used in ANY subject and for any topic.
My starting point was John Mitchell’s “Hitler’s rise to power” hexagon cards. From those, I made my own Word Version which you can download here:
The instructions are easy and the activity is pretty self-explanatory. My students understood what they had to do and I overheard many sophisticated discussions in which students were convincing each other why certain hexagons had to placed in certain locations. They also wrote down their justifications for the connections.
Some examples below. I like the wide variety in them; just goes to show how many different ways there are to explain a complex issue.
Here is a Prezi made by Chris Harte, explaining both SOLO and why Hexagons are better than Squares: