Yesterday, I posted about SOLO, a taxonomy that is somewhat similar to Bloom’s, but is presented to the students differently and used for assessment in some schools. SOLO has 5 different stages, and one of the more interesting activities that I’ve seen for engaging students in the later stages (multi-structural, relational, extended abstract) is called Hexagonal Learning. This activity could be adapted to pretty much any subject and any age level (for non-readers, one could use pictures). The students are given numerous hexagons that have words related to the topic, and must arrange the hexagons to show how the words connect to each other. This post on Hexagonal Learning, by David Didau, gives a great explanation of how he used it with a study of Macbeth.
What is intriguing about the use of the hexagons is the many ways that groups of students could interpret the relations between the words. I also like David’s suggestion of using the connecting nodes in order to develop more abstract questions and conclusions about the learning.
You do not have to be well-trained in SOLO to see the value of this technique. And tomorrow’s post (or David’s – if you read it carefully) will give you a cool technology resource for bringing this into your classroom.
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