Deeper Learning With Hexagonal Thinking

Speaking of hives, honeycombs, and hexagons... 

Students get excited when they explore new frameworks for discussion and critical thinking. Learning becomes so much more engaging when you're presented with new opportunities to share your knowledge and understanding of various topics with your peers. We introduced a new critical thinking and discussion framework to students this week called Hexagonal Thinking, with the goal of inspiring students to think deeper about their learning related to the structures and functions of plants and animals. 

Hexagonal thinking is a flexible, tactile approach to getting students thinking about connections they might never otherwise make while making a conceptual understanding of ideas visible. Here's the gist. In small groups, students are provided with a set of hexagonal tiles, each tile containing different ideas or words written on them. They work collaboratively to arrange so that related tiles are next to each other - essentially building a web of connections. This strategy is designed to get students engaged in discussion and negotiation of the tile placements. As they move the tiles around, it prompts them to consider connections that they hadn't previously discovered. This approach challenges students to demonstrate higher levels of understanding by explaining the relationships between ideas using evidence. 

The Hive was BUZZING with curiosity and excitement. We observed groups of students making deep connections to their learning and asking each other relevant and meaningful questions during their discoveries, while others grappled with complex ideas and questions. In a debrief, we shared our community experience and discussed ways to make this type of thinking work even better. Regardless of the successes or failures experienced, we all agreed that hexagonal thinking can be a very powerful thinking tool. They're looking forward to using this framework again with other units of study. 

This week's guest bloggers reflect on their experience. Enjoy! 

Something that my group and I found challenging about this experience was choosing the first hexagon because there were so many possible starting points. Trying to find one keyword that connected with 6 other words was difficult. Even though this activity started out challenging, we found a way to make it work and connect our thinking in the process.   @Seafoam-da-Seawing

One of my "AHA!" moments was when we were trying to connect the hexagons and my group came across the word "robot". I was so confused because I couldn't figure out what that word had to do with honeybees. Someone in our group said that if we don't protect bees that they may have to have robots help pollinate flowers and collect nectar because the pollination process can't stop.   @cheerqueen

The hexagonal thinking experience helped me make deeper connections about honeybees. I could see what others learned and we could talk about what we didn't know. One of my group members explained something that the rest of us didn't understand and it made sense.   @LightningDragon

I loved the hexagonal thinking activity because it was like solving a verbal puzzle, which is a new type of puzzle for me that was challenging, but fun.   @Potato. 

My favorite part of the hexagonal thinking activity was how we got to use what we know about honeybees and stretch our thinking. One example was when I was puzzled about how robots connect with honeybees. My group talked and we shared what we knew with each other and I knew how to solve my question.   @puppyonline

An "AHA!" moment that I had during the hexagonal thinking experience was when we came across the word "waggle". Our group had trouble figuring out what it meant and we were almost going to give up and just not use the word. We decided to go back to our resources and see if we missed something that we didn't catch the first time. It turned out that we missed the fact that 'waggle' is a certain type of dance that bees do to communicate! It was great that we were able to overcome a challenge and learn something new at the same time!    @WritingGod

I really enjoyed working with my team during the hexagonal thinking activity. They helped me understand a lot more about honeybees. Some of the connections we were trying to make were hard for me. My group members really listened to me and my ideas (even if I was wrong). I want to give a shout-out to @hockeykitty and @soccerqueen6 for being really helpful and for making this a fun experience.   @SoftballPiggy

What I enjoyed most about the hexagonal thinking activity was when we were talking together and helping each other understand how the words were connected. Some connections I could not understand, but @Seafoam-da-Seawing and @ChickenNugget would share their thinking with me so that I could understand it better. When we got to do a gallery walk of the other groups' connections, we got to see how differently how the other groups thought about what they knew and the different connections they made. This activity definitely helped me learn more about this topic.    @Burt

I enjoyed quite a few things about this experience. First, a shout out to @SoccerPro1 for always trying to find different places to connect words and experiment with where our group could place each word. This was very helpful. Also, when the time was up, we got to do a gallery walk around the room to see the results of the other groups' hexagonal thinking displays. Overall, I think hexagonal thinking is a great way to show your learning.   @writingmachine

Hexagonal thinking helps you make deeper connections to what you are learning. When you have a chance to explain your thinking, you are teaching someone else in your group what you know and how you understand it. Someone else can do the same for you.    @Sunflower

Twenty-First-Century Literacy: Lights, Camera, Action!

We have a very exciting announcement to share!

Students in the Hive (aka the Studio 17 Production Studio) have been working very hard over the last several weeks to produce the first of five episodes of a TV production titled Ever Wonder? With the support and generosity of the B.E.S.T. organization, we were awarded a grant that has allowed us to rethink literacy and embed opportunities for students to develop twenty-first-century literacy skills into our existing curriculum. Our intent is to utilize film-making technology as a means to help students develop some of these important skills. We see this as an innovative, rigorous, engaging, and authentic way for students to interact with curriculum content.

Leveraging students’ inherent interest in YouTube videos, TV, and films is the key to creating an inviting and engaging literacy experience. Students will learn the many roles required to produce a feature film, documentary, series, interview, and/or commercial, and create a variety of digital video products for a public audience. Utilizing this process will not only allow us to bolster the development of key language skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) but hone in on multimodal literacy skills as well (linguistic, visual, oral, gestural, and spatial). Film-making allows students to explore new pathways for learning and allows teachers the opportunity to discover student interests and contributions, and identify and nurture hidden talents.

This type of learning experience inspires and encourages creativity and problem-solving, maximizes flexible thinking, and provides endless opportunities for meaningful collaboration while allowing students to develop an understanding and appreciation for diverse student perspectives. Students will have opportunities to explore and develop a deeper understanding of curriculum content as well as important issues that exist in our school, local, national, and global communities.  An added bonus is that producing episodes related to previously learned curriculum content provides students with an opportunity to engage in retrieval practice - the act of deliberately recalling information, which forces us to pull our knowledge “out” and examine what we know or something we have already learned. It’s an all-around win!

The first of five episodes can be viewed below. Stay tuned for future episodes to be released in the coming weeks. Enjoy!

A Hive-Minded Experience

Students in The Hive recently wrapped up a project-based learning (PBL) experience related to the early civilizations of North America. 

We began with an in-depth investigation into the geography of various indigenous cultural regions, engaged in an animal skin community sketch-noting experience (retrieval practice) that allowed us to develop a deeper understanding of how geography influenced indigenous settlements, recreated important artifacts that were/are utilized during early and modern periods that help(ed) the early people adapt to their environments, and later broke into small groups to write reader's theater scripts or documentaries portraying or describing daily life in specific cultural regions. The next and final phase of the PBL experience provided an opportunity for some of our learners to create small-scale replicas of daily life in a tribal village to be used in student-created video documentaries, while others created props [aka artifacts], including large-scale longhouses, teepees, and plank houses that were used in a live performance to pair with their reader's theater scripts. Each one of their learning products clearly demonstrated their knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of some of the challenges these early people faced adapting to the geography in the various regions and how the geography influenced (and continues to influence) their lifestyle and culture. 

This week's learning reflection asked learners to talk about what they created and how their learning products address our PBL driving question: How does geography shape how we live?  This is what CREATIVITY, CRITICAL THINKING, COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION look like during a PBL experience:

My group created a readers' theater presentation representing the culture of the Great Plains region. People in this region were nomadic (which means moves from place to place), so they needed a shelter that could move with them - a teepee was perfect for this. We made a buffalo, which was the most important resource in this region because they hunted them and used every part of the buffalo for survival. For example, they not only ate buffalo meat, but they made clothing and teepee covers out of the hide. My favorite part of this PBL experience was creating the artifacts.     - @FireDragon5

My group created a readers' theater presentation representing the Northeast Woodland cultural region. This region has lots of forests so people in this region could build the frame of their shelter from trees. We built a longhouse and used "animal skin" to cover it (and animal skin for the clothing, too). We made a river so that we could fish and tools for hunting. My favorite parts of this PBL experience was when we got to present what we learned to the class. We even performed a special dance from an Iroquios tribe.    - @hockey

I created a documentary of the Southwest cultural region. I made a pueblo, which was the type of shelter people in this region made because their soil was made of clay and they could make adobe bricks out of it to build their shelter. Adobe bricks keep a shelter cool because the climate in this region can get very hot.   - @BobMcPickleson

My group created a readers' theater presentation to show how the geography of the Pacific Northwest region lived. We made a lot of props to show how they used their resources. For example, we made paddles for a canoe, a basket to collect berries, and a totem pole, which is kind of like a monument to honor their ancestors. My favorite part of this PBL experience was writing the readers' theater script.     - @BuffBoiz

My group created a readers' theater presentation that showed the culture of the Great Plains region. We showed how they hunted buffalo for its meat, fur, hide, bones (which they made tools out of), and they even used its stomach to boil water in.     - @bob

My group created a readers' theater presentation of the Great Plains region. We showed how the people in this region were nomadic because they were always hunting because it was their main food source and they had to follow the buffalo. My favorite part of this PBL experience was creating the props because the props brought the whole thing together. It really gave us a peek into their daily life. We even told the story of the Indian Paint Brush because it was an important one that had been passed down for generations.     - @PuppyOnline

Our group created a readers' theater presentation that represented the Pacific Northwest region. We showed the type of foods some of the tribes would eat based on the resources they had available in this region - fishing for salmon and picking berries. We showed how they celebrated with a potlatch, the types of resources they would use to build their homes - a plank house.  My favorite part of this PBL experience was acting it out. I think we did a good job informing our classmates about our cultural region.    - @SoftballPiggy

My group created a readers' theater presentation to how the people of the Great Plains region lived based on the geography of this region. We showed how important the buffalo was because it's what they ate and they also used the buffalo hide to make clothing. My favorite part of this PBL experience was creating artifacts that represent the tools and resources in this region and how the geography affected their daily lives.     @LightningDragon