Hexagonal Thinking
Hexagonal thinking is a learning strategy in which concepts are placed on hexagons, and are then moved around to build a web of connected ideas. Students then debate and have meaningful conversations about where to connect ideas and why.
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Digital Tools to Support Hexagonal Thinking
Google Drawings
Google Drawings allows students to organize their thoughts into categories for identifying main ideas, supporting ideas, and making connections to dig deeper. It's an online tool to help users create images, charts, posters, and other drawing needs. Similar to other Google tools, you can collaborate with others, publish online, or download an image file. Google Drawings works great with other Google tools such as creating a chart to place into Google Docs. You can create a Google Drawing in your Drive by clicking +New --> More --> Google Drawings.
To the left, you'll find two Google Slides templates to facilitate Hexagonal Thinking with Google Drawings.
Teacher Tips:
Add a space for directions outside the work area of your Google Drawing.
Use Canvas' Google Assignment LTI to create a copy for each student and grade in Speedgrader.
Use color, text, gifs, and pictures to engage your students and communicate clear expectations.
Canva
Canva is a free-to-use online graphic design tool. It has loads of premade, editable templates to use, or you can create your own activities, presentations, posters, videos, concept maps, logos, and more. Create your own classroom and share templates with teachers and students in Canva, or download your creation and place it in Canvas. Canva is collaborative. The website works well on student Chromebooks and there's an app for iOS and Android devices too.
Click the image to the left for Hexagonal thinking canva templates.
Google Slides
Google Slides is a free online tool to help users create presentations, interactive notebooks, and learning resources. Similar to other Google tools, you can collaborate with others, publish online, or download an image file. You can use the built-in Theme Builder to create templates where you choose what elements students can modify and which ones they cannot. To use the Hexagonal Thinking template, built with Google Slides, click below.
Hexagonal Thinking Generator
If you're needing hexagons created in a hurry, take a look at HookED. You can type what you want on each hexagon and it will convert it to a word document ready to print & cut for your students to manipulate by hand. It even creates blank spaces so that they can add their own connections & ideas!
Additional Resources
HexagonalThinkingHackDryEraseHexagonsAnyDiscipline-1 (1).pdf