Deeper Learning With Hexagonal Thinking

Speaking of hives, honeycombs, and hexagons... 

Teachers get so excited when they discover new frameworks for discussion and critical thinking.  A few years ago, we stumbled upon the hexagonal thinking framework and immediately recognized the potential it had to get our students thinking deeper about their learning. We love utilizing this type of collaborative thinking framework to offer students an opportunity to make sense of complex topics or ideas. 

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, which 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. 

Our students' first experience with Hexagonal Thinking this year was related to North America's geography - specifically the Caribbean islands. We saw some groups of students making deep connections to their learning and asking each other relevant and meaningful questions during their discoveries, while others seemed to struggle with the abstract. In a debrief, we shared our community experience and discussed ways to make this type of thinking work even better. Students found it to be a very powerful thinking tool and we will definitely be using it again. This week's guest bloggers reflect on their experience with this. Enjoy. 

Hexagonal thinking is like a puzzle that you have to put together. It was tricky because even when we thought we made a good connection between hexagons on one side, sometimes there was no connection on the other sides, so it made us think more about how to make multiple connections. Our group made a lot of progress and we made it work.     - @TheGK15

I enjoyed collaborating with my team and attacking the challenge that was in front of us. The shape made it hard to make sure every side was touching something that connected to the word. That was a little hard. This experience made my brain grow.    - @Rosita

Hexagonal thinking makes you really think about what connections you are making and what you're putting down. You have to make sure all of the words connect in some way so you have to think hard. You also have to work together and listen to each other so that you can make good connections with your team.    -@Oreo17