The last few weeks can be challenging. Keeping students engaged and learning is my mission! When I stumbled upon a post about hexagonal thinking, I knew I had to try it with my students. I am SO glad I did. Although this activity can be done digitally or on paper, I insisted that my students in class do it old school. My goal was for my students to have thoughtful discussions about what we read this year. Here's how it works! First, I came up with a list of key characters and ideas from The Giver, Animal Farm, and The Children's Story. I found this awesome generator on line where I could just type in my words, and it put them in the hexagons for me. Then I printed out the pages (there were three) for each group. 
I did a copious amount of research before embarking on this activity, and I was shocked by the number of teachers who cut the hexagons out for their students. That would have taken me HOURS. I simply gave each group scissors, and they were done in five minutes; they even cleaned up after themselves. Students were given a choice of colors for the construction paper they would glue them on. For some reason, they got excited about this. LOL! On line students were given a totally digital version. I then gave each group twenty minutes to arrange their hexagons on the construction paper. The goal was to make connections with the ideas and characters on the paper. They were told that the hexagons could connect on one or more sides. I intentionally did NOT give them a glue stick yet. I wanted to force them to talk about the choices they were making.
It was AMAZING! ONE-HUNDRED PERCENT engagement! 
The most important part of this assignment is the TALKING! Listening to the students defend their choices and sharing their insights was pure gold. The connections and realizations they made among the novels were quite impressive.
Once they placed their hexagons where they wanted them, they were then asked to write two separate paragraphs explaining some of their choices. I provided an example for them, so they could see what I was looking for.
I am so glad I tried this with my students! 
No, I haven't been coerced into blog commenting... Anyway, new ideas are always advantageous for us students because the more perspectives, the better it is for our brains to extrapolate the literal ideas you are trying to convey to us. Creativity is what has made you one of the best of my teachers, and I will your classes over the summer.
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