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The Reading Comprehension Blueprint Helping Students Make Meaning from Text

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The Reading Comprehension Blueprint Helping Students Make Meaning from Text

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https://downloads.brookespublishing.com/resource/the-reading-comprehension-blueprint/

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A novel activity using little more than geometric shapes can help students examine complex problems and connect big ideas.

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A novel activity using little more than geometric shapes can help students examine complex problems and connect big ideas.

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A novel activity using little more than geometric shapes can help students examine complex problems and connect big ideas.

Online and in person, hexagonal thinking can be a fresh way to boost the energy level in classroom discussions. "Your students will see things in new ways as they seek to connect wide-ranging ideas," writes English teacher Betsy Potash for Cult of Pedagogy. With many students learning from home this school year, it's a strategy that can help get kids back into a "critical thinking zone."

By connecting a series of ideas around a theme-a process where the end result often looks entirely different for each student or group-hexagonal thinking is designed to get kids thinking critically, making novel connections, debating, and providing evidence to support their reasoning. Potash describes it as a "springboard for a totally creative discussion."

HOW IT WORKS

In person, or online, the moving parts of hexagonal thinking are the same: hexagons. These can be cut from paper-try this simple online hexagon generator-or created digitally using widely available tools like PowerPoint or Google Slides (watch Potash's tutorial; she's also designed a free digital toolkit for the activity).

Next, inside each hexagon, write key terms, ideas, and connections to other disciplines or to the modern world. Alternately, leave the hexagons blank and ask students to fill them out in their small groups. To review the big ideas from a unit on global warming, for example, the terms you might select could include carbon dioxide, emissions, ice caps, methane, and so on.

Use the PowerPoint shapes tool to create bubble arrows for students to use at key intersections points in their frameworks-they'll use these connecting points to inform their written explanations later.
Courtesy of Betsy Potash / Cult of Pedagogy
Start by setting out the goals for the activity for your class. "Your conversations now will be about showing how and why you think the different ideas and options connect," you might explain to students. "Everyone will see things differently and that's OK. Just keep talking until you find the connections that stick."

While this activity works as an individual task, or as a partner activity, Potash favors students working together in small groups so there's "more perspectives on where to place what, which can be nice." She suggests letting students decide whether they'd like to collaborate or work solo.

Let students know that each hexagon can connect to up to six others and students should keep rearranging until they feel they've created the strongest web of connected ideas.
Courtesy of Betsy Potash / Cult of Pedagogy
Once students have completed their conversations and their grids are in place, they can begin using the connection arrows to indicate intersections between key ideas. Ask them to explain their thinking related to these intersections on paper or in a Google document.
Courtesy of Betsy Potash / Cult of Pedagogy
Students working on paper can glue or tape down their hexagons, or photograph the completed web of interconnections. Online, students can submit a slide of the completed web and a slide of their written explanations.

Consider a gallery walk-you can do one online using Google Slides-so classmates can share their work. Or ask each group to present their thinking on some of their key connection points.

GRADING HEXAGONAL THINKING ACTIVITIES

To arrive at an individual grade for group work, consider asking students to write short reflections about how they contributed to their group's framework, or assign a writing task where each kid delves into their thinking on how they connected themes. For a simple task that's quick to grade, ask students to present their key insights and connections via a Flipgrid voice recording.

Or try grading students' final group webs-one collective grade for each small group. Start by explaining in advance how teams collaborate in the workplace, with each team member contributing in different ways. As part of finalizing their project, ask kids to write a short paragraph explaining how they contributed and how their unique strengths-brainstorming, adding graphic elements, or leading discussions, for example-helped the activity evolve and come together. "We rarely ask students to truly collaborate in our core subjects, so we don't really create a culture of interdependence among them," Potash notes. "They don't get to use their individual gifts to contribute to a final product created by the team, although that is often what real-world projects look like."

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Using 'Hexagonal Thinking' to Deepen Classroom Conversations

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A novel activity using little more than geometric shapes can help students examine complex problems and connect big ideas.

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HookED SOLO Hexagon Generator This HookED app populates a SOLO Hexagon Template. Brainstorm content ideas and enter them in the fields below. Click “Generate Document” to populate the template. 10 Small Hexagons per page 2 Large Hexagons per page Print […]

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Hexagonal Thinking: A Colorful Tool for Discussion

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Hexagonal Thinking: A Colorful Tool for Discussion

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Sponsored by Teaching Channel and UL Xplorlabs

While hexagonal thinking is not new in the world of business and innovation, it's just making its way into the classroom. It's a method for considering the connections between ideas and finding the nuances in those connections. If you're looking for a fresh framework for discussion and critical thinking, this may be just the thing.

How it Works

When you place an idea on a hexagon, it has six sides where connections could be made to other ideas. When you place many ideas on many hexagons, the discussion about where to connect what will be different every time.

Hexagons for the Vietnam-War era
(click all images for a close-up view)

If you gave the same seven idea cards to seven people, do you think you'd get the same seven webs of interconnected hexagons? Would the people explain the connections in the same way?

Nope.

And really, that's the beauty of hexagonal thinking. It provides a springboard for a totally creative discussion. When you give a small group of students a deck of hexagons and ask them to connect them however they choose, every group will come up with a different web for different reasons. Along the way they'll hopefully question each other and dig deep into the concepts on the cards, arguing about which idea connects more to an important concept and which example deserves one of those precious six sides.

The Step-by-Step

Let's imagine you've got your students in small groups, and each group is staring at a beautiful deck of hexagons.

Now what?

I recommend you kick off this activity for the first time by giving directions something like this:
Once you have your set of hexagons, it's time for your group to begin making connections between them. Your conversations now will be about showing how and why you think the different ideas and options connect. Everyone will see things differently, and that's OK. Just keep talking until you find the connections that stick. As you discuss your ideas, use the text to find supporting evidence for why you think your connections are strong ones. Each hexagon can connect to up to six others. Arrange and rearrange until you feel you have the strongest hexagon web in place that you can. Then begin explaining your connections with connection arrows, writing in why you have created intersections between key hexagons. Everyone in the group will contribute differently, and that's OK. You need to have people listening and moving pieces to create the web, people debating, people asking questions. By the end of your discussion, you should have an interconnected web of concepts along with clearly explained connections. If you're working with paper hexagons, tape or glue them down to another sheet of paper to secure them, or take a photo of your finished web. If you're working digitally, submit your two slides: the finished hexagon web, followed by the slide with your explanations.
There's a lot of room here for students to participate in their own unique ways. For me, part of the point of the activity is for students to see that everyone can take on different roles that matter.

Two Examples

Let's take a look at what this might look like in your classroom. In this case, I'll share digital examples created in Google Slides, since you may well be leading your discussions and small group activities via online channels this year. But paper hexagons are equally wonderful when you can use them.

Example 1: English Language Arts

First let's take a look at a hexagonal thinking discussion for an English class, wrapping up a unit on 1984.

Here's the set-up, with the terms listed in individual (moveable) text boxes.

Now students can discuss the placement of their terms/hexagons. In this case, rather than shifting paper hexagons around, they will go into the Google Slide, then drag and drop their terms across the slide and into the web of hexagons as they decide where to place them.

Now that the students have made their connections as they wish, they need to explain their choices. This can take place in many ways:

Students could record arguments for one or two connections on a tool like Flipgrid,

Students could write down their analysis.

Groups could collaborate to write explanations for several of their connections or present them back to the class.

Take a peek at what the written explanations look like for the web pictured above. In this case, students are sharing five explanations, but you could adjust that to suit your needs. Some connections are always going to be more interesting than others - the ones that generate the most debate, the surprising ones, the ones where three key sections link in one place. Have students write or present about the key connections, rather than about every single one.

Example 2: Science

Now let's take a look at how this might look in a science class. Imagine you're looking back over a unit on global warming, and helping students review the big ideas.

Here's the set-up: For this version, students can move the hexagons as well as the terms, creating any number of different webs. Then they use the connection arrows to point to the intersections they are going to explain in detail.

Student groups discuss the possibilities, dragging the hexagons and terms into place as they go. The final product could look one hundred different ways.

Once they have their web created, they make their explanations.

Creating Your Hexagonal Thinking Decks

You can create decks of hexagons with the terms already inside (let your students help you cut them out!) or print blank hexagon sheets and invite student groups to brainstorm the concepts to put inside before their discussion.

No matter how you create them, you want the hexagon decks to be filled with the key ideas of your recent class work, as well as interesting ties across disciplines and to the modern world. Hexagonal thinking makes it easy to cross disciplines and bring relevant modern connections into the discussion.

Let's say you're creating a hexagon deck for Jason Reynolds' book, Long Way Down. You'll fill it with characters, themes and style elements, but also with figures from the news, current political movements, similar books, and background information about the author.

Now imagine you're creating a deck for a unit covering an artistic period. You can put in key terms and artists, but also important authors and political figures of the period, and artists and movements of today that connect back.

As for making the shapes themselves, there are lots of time-saving options, whether you want to use digital hexagons or paper ones.

Digital Hexagons

Get access to your free copy of the digital hexagonal thinking toolkit featured above right here.

Create your own digital hexagons with PowerPoint or Google Slides by following these instructions:

Paper Hexagons

Use this online hexagon generator, created by Pam Hook.

Print and laminate these free rainbow hexagons, then add concepts with dry erase markers for quick discussions.

Print blank sheets of hexagons (you can easily create these in any size using the shapes tool in PowerPoint) to give out to small groups of students, then ask them to generate key terms, ideas, connections to other disciplines, connections to the modern world, etc. on their hexagons and cut them out. Then have groups switch decks so they are discussing a fresh list of ideas.

Create your own hexagon templates with terms you can change up whenever you want to do a hexagonal thinking discussion. Cut them out while watching New Girl on Netflix, or make the first step of the discussion in class to cut out the hexagons while beginning to discuss how they will connect.

A fun addition to any paper deck is a set of connection arrows. Print a few bubble arrows (again, the PowerPoint shapes tool makes it easy) on paper for students to put in at key intersections. Have students fill them in with their explanation of the connection. Sticky notes will also work well.

Wondering how to grade this?

There are a few ways you could grade hexagonal thinking. You could have everyone write a short reflection at the end about their contributions, and grade that. You could use it as a springboard into a writing assignment, asking students to explain and argue for key connections from the discussion, then grade that. You could have students present about a key connection on Flipgrid. Easy.

But I want to suggest a slightly more complex option too. Recently I interviewed Sarah Fine, co-author of In Search of Deeper Learning. One of her findings, after years of study across American high schools, was that we rarely ask students to truly collaborate in our core subjects, so we don't really create a culture of interdependence among them. They don't get to use their individual gifts to contribute to a final product created by the team, although that is often what real-world projects look like. Instead, we favor what she calls "lockstep learning." Everyone must do the same thing, separately.

So maybe for hexagonal thinking, you grade the final group web. And you ask the kids to share about how their different strengths allowed them to contribute to the final product.

Maybe some kids are super brainstormers, coming up with lots of great terms and ideas for what to put on the hexagons. Maybe one or two students in the group are great at lettering and drawing. They could create beautiful visual representations of the terms and ideas. Maybe some students shine at leading discussion. Maybe some are natural at making spatial and visual connections, and can help move the hexagons around as they listen to the group. Maybe some are excellent listeners, and can be taking notes about the connections based on what they hear from others. Maybe some are good mediators, who can help find common ground and calm down heated debates when discussion gets intense.

If you go this route, I really think it's worth discussing in advance what project teams are like in the workplace, and how people contribute in different ways. Then, at the end, you might let kids write a short paragraph about how they contributed based on their own strengths and skills, and whether they were happy with the way the group dynamics turned out.

Variations and Additions

Individuals or Partners

This would certainly work as an individual assignment or a prompt for partners as well. But with a small group, you'll get more perspectives on where to place what, which can be nice. You might consider giving students the option to work alone, with a partner, or in a group.

Adding Visuals

If you and your students are fans of sketchnotes or one-pagers, you can always add a visual layer to your hexagons. Invite students to illustrate their concepts with representative imagery and add quotations from their texts to bring more meaning for each idea into the conversation.

This is certainly not necessary, but adds dimension to the discussion and the eventual display of the concept web.

Hexagonal One-Pagers for Long Way Down

Gallery Walking

Once your students have completed their webs, you can do a gallery walk to see each other's concept webs and check out the connections their peers have made (this can be done online through a collaborative Google slides presentation), or have each group in turn present briefly back to the class about some of their most interesting connection points. The hexagons that caused the most debate will probably be the most fun to share back, and everyone will get to see how others mixed and matched the same hexagons in unique ways.

When you bring hexagonal thinking into your classroom -whether that's online or in person-you bring a fresh spark of energy to discussion. Your students will see things in new ways as they seek to connect wide-ranging ideas. If you're finding it difficult to get kids talking this year as they transition into new scenarios, you're definitely not alone. Hexagonal thinking just might be the tool you're looking for to help your classes over this transition and back into their critical thinking zones.

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Hexagonal Thinking: A Colorful Tool for Discussion

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If you've been looking for a fresh way to get students thinking outside the box, this may be just what you need.

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This strategy guide introduces Carousel Brainstorming, also known as Rotating Review, and offers suggestions to implement this technique in your classroom for brainstorming about new topics or reviewing learned information.

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This strategy guide introduces Carousel Brainstorming, also known as Rotating Review, and offers suggestions to implement this technique in your classroom for brainstorming about new topics or reviewing learned information.

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Brainstorming and Reviewing Using the Carousel Strategy | Read Write Think

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Introducing New Content with Seed Discussions

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Introducing New Content with Seed Discussions

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In this strategy guide, you'll learn how to elicit ideas and conversation about new concepts or content by effectively holding a Seed Discussion in your classroom. (Template below)

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About this Strategy Guide

In this strategy guide, you'll learn how to elicit ideas and conversation about new concepts or content by effectively holding a Seed Discussion in your classroom.

Research Basis

Often times, introducing new content or new concepts can be overwhelming for students and teachers alike. Through the use of Seed Discussions, students are able to preview the new content or concepts for things that they can relate to. They seek out information that looks familiar to them, things they don't quite understand, and things that look interesting to them, including new vocabulary. Seed Discussions allow students to identify and develop topics important to their own thinking.

After previewing the new content or concepts and filling out their Seed Discussion Organizer, students are able to have a discussion with their peers about new information coming their way and exiting information that they already hold. According to Project CRISS, effective "seeds" grow into dynamic discussions, driving the interest in new content and reaffirming their existing knowledge so that the "new" content doesn't seem so intimidating.

Strategy in Practice

Pick a new piece of content or a new concept that you will be introducing to your students. This may be a new unit in your science textbook, a new chapter in a novel, or a magazine article on a current event, among other things.

Put up four pieces of chart paper around the classroom; one each with the given prompts on the Seed Discussion Organizer. Students will use these pieces of chart paper to record their responses after they fill out their individual Seed Discussion Organizer.

Give each student access to the new content, as well as a copy of the Seed Discussion Organizer. Discuss with students the four categories that make up the Seed Discussion Organizer and give them examples of things that they might write in each of the areas as they go through the new content. You may wish to model this process and do a think-aloud for your students on a whole-class Seed Discussion Organizer, projected where the students can see it and give feedback.

After students fully understand what is expected of them as they explore the new content, allow them about 10-15 minutes to peruse the new content and fill out their Seed Discussion Organizer with questions and thoughts that they have, specific to each area of the organizer.

Once all students have completed the different areas of the organizer (aim for at least three questions/thoughts per box), allow them to discuss their findings with a partner or group.

Ask each group to decide on their top three responses for each box. Ask one member of each group to be the recorder and write the three responses on the appropriate piece of chart paper for each prompt. To save time, you may ask each student in the group to each choose one prompt and be the recorder on the chart paper for that specific prompt.

Once all groups have recorded their top three group responses on the chart paper, hold a class discussion about the class' findings. Discuss each prompt and the students' findings one at a time, and allow for other students to provide additional prior knowledge they may have.

Talk about the process that students just completed. Ask students questions such as :

How did you feel after completing your Seed Discussion Organizer and discussing it with your group?

How might your Seed Discussion Organizer and our class conversations help you to become a better reader and thinker?

How does this strategy help you become actively engaged in the new concept we are studying?

Leave the chart paper up in a visible area for students to refer to often during the study of the new content or concept. You may wish to allow students to add to the information as they learn new things and/or answer questions that students had when originally exploring the new content.

To summarize the new concept or content at the end of the study, revisit the chart paper and individual Seed Discussion Organizer at the end of the unit, chapter, etc. to ensure that all questions were answered and the content was thoroughly understood. Allow time for students to go back and look for information if it is not readily accessible by memory.

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Introducing New Content with Seed Discussions

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About this Strategy Guide In this strategy guide, you'll learn how to elicit ideas and conversation about new concepts or content by effectively holding a Seed Discussion in your classroom. Research Basis Often times, introducing new content or new concepts can be overwhelming for students and teachers alike.

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Introducing New Content with Seed Discussions Organizer

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Introducing New Content with Seed Discussions Organizer

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The Plot Diagram is an organizational tool focusing on a pyramid or triangular shape, which is used to map the events in a story. This mapping of plot structure allows readers and writers to visualize the key features of stories.

The basic triangle-shaped plot structure, representing the beginning, middle, and end of a story, was described by Aristotle. Gustav Freytag modified Aristotle's system by adding a rising action and a falling action to the structure. This interactive version of the graphic organizer supports both Aristotle's and Freytag's conceptualizations of plot structures.

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The Plot Diagram is an organizational tool focusing on a pyramid or triangular shape, which is used to map the events in a story. This mapping of plot structure allows readers and writers to visualize the key features of stories. The basic triangle-shaped plot structure, representing the beginning, middle, and end of a story, was described by Aristotle.

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Literary and Rhetorical Devices and Elements Flow Chart for Analysis

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Literary and Rhetorical Devices and Elements Flow Chart for Analysis

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Literary and Rhetorical Devices and Elements Flow Chart for Analysis

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Strategies for Struggling Readers: Re-engaging to Build Confidence and Motivation

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Strategies for Struggling Readers: Re-engaging to Build Confidence and Motivation

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By: Anita Archer 09/10/2024

Learn how to implement instructional strategies for struggling readers

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The right strategies and a compassionate approach can build confidence and rekindle the motivation for reading. Anita Archer shares instructional strategies for struggling readers.