Hexagonal Thinking

It was only going to take me a few minutes--but then I went down the rabbit hole, and what an adventure it was!

 It all started with a a post in the Teaching with Primary Sources Network, "Hexagonal Thinking Corroboration Tool." (You'll have to log in to read it, but if you aren't part of the network, consider joining--it is a great site for sharing strategies for teaching with primary sources and primary source sets--and it is free!)

That post led me to this article on Hexagonal Thinking on the Cult of Pedagogy, by Betsy Potash, explained in more detail how manipulating hexagons can help students explore connections between ideas, and demonstrate mastery of a topic.

Here's the basic idea:

1. Place ideas or topics on hexagon-shaped pieces of paper. (For example, drought, Great Depression, New Deal, Fort Peck Dam, 1930s, Indian Reorganization Act, unions...)
2. Then give those pieces of paper to students and ask them to place the hexagons so that they only touch related topics/ideas.
3. Then have students explain their thinking.

One of the great things about this is that there is more than one right way to connect any list of words, which makes it a great tool for constructing and demonstrating understanding. According to Potash, "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."

Anyway, Potash's post led me to a video on how to make digital hexagons. So I tried it, using vocabulary and concepts from Chapter 13 (Homesteading) of Montana: Stories of the Land.

The idea is that students cut and paste each term onto a hexagon. Then they drag the hexagons so that they only touch other hexagons that have related words or ideas.

And then, they drag the numbers to specific connections and on a separate sheet they explain those six connections.

Here are connections I made when I played with my word list, but I could have just as easily created a different set of connections. 

I was obsessed! So I watched another video called "Quick Hexagonal Thinking in Your Class," by Matthew Matera, who kindly posted this link to a blank template for paper hexagons in the video description. Mr. Matera cuts out the hexagons for his students (with words already in them) but I think you could just give students a word list and have them cut out their own (or use hexagonal shaped sticky notes.)

 
And because I couldn't stop, so I created another word list--this one from chapter 7 (Two Worlds Collide), that I also thought could make a good hexagon activity. 

Sovereign                                  Treaties                    Hellgate
reservations                               Fort Laramie           railroads
1851                                           Bozeman Trail        Lame Bull 
Northern Cheyenne Breakout    Red Cloud              1868
Manifest Destiny                        gold                       annuities  
Battle of the Little Bighorn        1855                       misunderstandings

In both the homesteading and treaty examples, I pretty much stuck to text in subheads and bolded vocabulary words to create the word lists. Creating the word lists this way took about five minutes each time.

What do you think? I'd love to hear from you! Did I waste my afternoon or is this a useful strategy? Do you already use it? Even better, do you already use it with Montana history? (And if you end up using the digital hexagon assignment I created with either the homesteading or the treaty period word lists, let me know how it goes and whether you think it is worth working up into a formal lesson plan.) 

P.S. Peter Pappas, the author of the the very first post I read, uses primary sources for his hexagon assignment. I wonder if you could use the primary sources from any of the Annotated Resource Sets? 

 

Teaching Montana History is written by Martha Kohl, Outreach and Interpretation Historian at the Montana Historical Society.