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Hexagonal Thinking PD Resources
Matthew Scott
Created on October 15, 2024
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Transcript
Hexagonal Thinking
A strategy for encouraging students to create new and deeper connections between ideas, concepts, and vocabulary
What Is It?
How Does It Work?
Content Examples
Tips for Success
Print Templates
Digital Templates
Smart Starts
How Does It Work
🛠️ Create a deck of hexagon cards with various vocabulary, names, concepts, pictures, etc. ⚙️ Students arrange hexagons to represent connections 🗣️ Students share their reasoning for arranging tiles in the way that they did
Use Hexagonal Thinking to create connections between prior knowledge and new concepts by mixing old and new vocabulary together at the start of a unit.
Have students work together at the beginning of a lesson to make connections, and then challenge students to create new connections individually at the end of the lesson.
Smart Start the strategy before using it with academic content! Consider challenging your students to make connections between non-academic concepts using Hexagonal Thinking before adding academic concepts to it.
Tips for Classroom Success
📃 Customize the Canva Template with your terms ⬇️ Download the Canva project as a PDF ✂️ To speed up prep, cut along the dotted lines first.
Hirst Easy-Cut Print Template
HookED Print Template
📃 Create your list of terms and concepts ⬇️ Download the hexagon tiles in Word 📝 Edit the hexagons as needed (Change the font, add pictures, etc.)
Visual Template Canva
Google Drawings
Canva
Google Slides 2
Google Slides 1
Digital Templates
Hexagonal Thinking works great digitally too! Consider using Canva, Google Slides, or Google Draw to create the hexagons and assign them through Google Classroom for students to complete digitally.
Click Here to Read More About Hexagonal Thinking
Photo from Betsy Potash, Cult of Peagogy: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/hexagonal-thinking/
Hexagonal Thinking
Hexagonal Thinking is a strategy that challenge students to create and explain connections between vocabulary, ideas, and concepts.
A Food Themed Smart Start (Google Drawings)
A Pop-Culture Themed Smart Start (Canva)
A Halloween Themed Smart Start (Google Slides)
Smart Starts
Layering academic vocabulary and concepts on top of a new instructional strategy can create too much cognitive load for students. Consider using this strategy with non-academic words and pictures first. It can serve as an engaging ice-breaker activity for students and also help them learn the strategy before you add new learning to it.