Hexagonal thinking is a really creative mode for discussion that gives kids a chance to think about concepts in a whole new way. It gets students to practice critical thinking and real world skills in terms of explaining, debating, and writing. You can use it as a great review to go back over a unit. You can use it as a launch to any type of project or paper. It's super easy to make a template. You just drop little hexagon shapes onto your slide and add some text on top. Pick out some interesting terms from your unit and some connections from other disciplines or ideas from pop culture, the news, or world history, anything that could connect to what you're studying. Let's say that you had just taught the book, 1984. You might start by just choosing some basic terms like Orwell, the title of the book, and then some concepts like 'doublethink', and 'thought crime' and some characters like Winston, Julia, O'Brien. But then you might think about, OK, what can I pull out of history? Marx and Stalin and the Cold War. And I'm going to think about today and terms like online privacy, surveillance, Big Brother. And now I have a deck of terms for my students where they're going to be thinking specifically about the book, but also about world history and pop culture. | Chalk