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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1krryicNd1b6lbRB9tS4dprX3B18bt57w-mea_1jSeWY/edit?usp=sharing

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Using Hexagons to Build Critical Thinking Skills

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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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What is Problem-Based Learning? How to use it in your classroom

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[Template] Sample Backward Design Lesson Plan with PDL,TPACK,Socratic Seminars, Station Rotation

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[Template] Blank  Backward Design Lesson Plan with PDL,TPACK,Socratic Seminars, Station Rotation

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Need Inspiration Designing Station Rotation Lessons for your Math, English, History, or Science Class? - Dr. Catlin Tucker

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The station rotation model is a series of stations that students rotate through with at least one online, offline, and teacher-led station.

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Blended Learning Station Lesson Plan Template (1)

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Purpose Driven Learning (or PDL) is a concept coined by Michael Matera and Adam Moreno to summarize the philosophy that each learner's inner strengths can be unlocked by focusing with purpose and drive. By following the guidelines for Purpose Driven Learning, teachers avoid the biggest pitfall in many lesson plans - that they are theoretic without meaning in the real world. With PDL, resources are relevant, lessons are personalized, and real-life connections are placed under a bright light. In the end, learning is changed from pedantic to powerful and students learn to reliably connect academic studies to the world outside the schoolhouse.

The Goal of PDL

In a phrase:

...the goal of Purpose Driven Learning is NOT about a curriculum that lasts a year. It's about creating life-long learners who fuel their future passionately with knowledge.

This applies to both 1) education pursued with the goal of college or career, and 2) the critical preparation of students to succeed in life. Purpose Driven Learning, faithfully delivered with buy-in from students, will result in students willingly participating in even the boring lesson pieces (like worksheets or podcasts) as well as exciting applications like simulations and student-devised projects.

Problems implementing Purpose Driven Learning

Engaging PDL in your classroom is seen by some as teaching students what they want to learn at the expense of what they need to learn but this isn't true. Done right, students come to understand that real knowledge relies on a solid foundation of data upon which they build their personal interests. For example, students who want to join America's proposed Space Force must first be grounded in the basics of science and math.

Educators who wish to use PDL often run into three roadblocks:

School Standards. Because state and national standards are often devised to serve the majority of students, they may not well-serve your students. But they do provide a necessary foundation without which the goals of your particular group can't be met. That means that standards are taught first and additional learning is scaffolded afterward. Standards are in fact the foundation that underpins your students' ability to achieve their PDL goals.

Get started by digging deeply into school standards, be they state or national, probably not unlike what you do already in your traditional classroom. Understand their goals and tweak them to fit the unique needs of your group. The first year you do this will be challenging. Find connections to the norms and granular information that allows you to dynamically build lessons that meet unique goals.

In-place curriculum. Treat your grade-level or school curricula the same as you might the school standards. Understand what they are and how they achieve the intended learning goals. If you follow Understanding by Design (see my article on UbD), this will quickly make sense. Apply UbD's concept of Backward Design with PDL as the goal. If you get pushback from administrators or parents, educate them on how PDL is layered on top of current standards and curricula, not in place of.

How can you teach more when you struggle to complete what is already required? This answer may surprise you: When students have a purpose to learning, they absorb it faster, remember it longer, and voluntarily spiral back on it as needed.

Parent buy-in. Change is one of life's constants but when it happens in the classroom, it's stressful - even nerve-wracking - for parents. Usually, schools address change by showing how it contributes to, improves, even transforms learning. Parents might see the change required to implement PDL as a "shiny object" (read more about shiny object syndrome in schools) - employing flashy interests at the expense of hard work. Be prepared for this discussion. An example you might use that has already been vetted by experts is gamified learning. While many parents in the past equated education games to the frenetic ones their kids play to avoid homework, they now accept that the characteristics of game-playing serve educational purposes better than rote drills and memorization. To achieve this buy-in with PDL, understand its pedagogy and show examples to parents that verify its effectiveness.

Unpacking Purpose Driven Learning

Define "Purpose". Students must buy into the definition of "purpose" to accept the steps laid out to achieve it. Otherwise, lesson plans and resources become grade-centric rather than learning-focused. This makes sense, don't you think? If students don't accept the purpose as relevant to their goals, they won't take the applications seriously.

At the start of school, discuss class goals and what is required to reach them within the timeframe of a year. Agree on one (or more) that assures students the time they spend in class will not be wasted, will in fact, facilitate their needs.

Encourage enthusiasm. Purpose Driven Learning is not about completing a project but about achieving goals. It's not about memorizing data but about turning the results into understanding. The data is the evidence but the conclusion is the learning.

Be open-minded in choosing pathways to the achievement of goals. Since everyone agreed on these at the start of the school year, allow students flexibility in how they reach them.

Learning happens anywhere. Learning doesn't have to occur behind a desk, at a kidney table, or even within the walls of your classroom. It can be in the backyard, a playroom, the local park, or a grocery store. Adjust your mindset to accept that Purpose Driven Learning is about knowledge, not complying with traditional constructs. When a classroom is anywhere, life-long learning flourishes.

Know your students. Take time to get to know your students. Notice what inspires them. Understand their goals. Make teaching relevant to their goals and inspiration.

Educational Applications

Unschooling - If you follow a homeschool curriculum that encourages pursuing personal interests like unschooling, PDL should be part of that program. This article on Unschooling explains the pedagogy more clearly.

Gamification of learning - The Internet is filled with a spectrum of educational games that support academic goals. With careful, judicious selection, they add rigor and depth to your teaching. Here's a list of games and simulations and a lesson plan on how to gamify your class.

Serve a particular group - All students don't learn the same way. If you have students you can't reach with a traditional approach, try PDL. You can even take student input on what learning approach they would like and that fulfills standards and curricula needs.

Genius Hour - Genius Hour allows students to use 20% of class time in the pursuit of their own interest. This is structured to meet school standards and curricular needs but flexible enough to allow students to follow their own path in achieving these. Here's an article and a lesson plan on Genius Hour.

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The historic purpose of education is to help students to thrive as an adult. If 'purpose' no longer fits into the way you pursue education, PDL may be exactly what you need.
-published first on TeachHUB
More on Purpose Driven Learning
10 Keys to Purpose Driven Learning (podcast) How to Create the Purpose Driven Lesson Plan Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

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Purpose Driven Learning (or PDL) is a concept coined by Michael Matera and Adam Moreno to summarize the philosophy that each learner's inner strengths can be unlocked by focusing with purpose...

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How many times have you looked back at a historical event and thought, What If? You are not alone. Millions of people think the same thing on a daily basis. The field is so interesting that large production companies are getting in on the concept.

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