Timeline hexagons at your service

Today I have used hexagons to create a timeline for English B set book- ‘Machines like me’ by Ian McEwan (a highly recommended read by the way!)

It was a really successful lesson experience, with lots of discussion, individual and group work-one that every student participated in and benefitted from. More importantly, this procedure seems universal enough to be applied to any set reading, especially for plot summary.

The steps are as follows:

1. A warm-up discussion on the idea of timeline- what it is for? how to pick events for the timeline? how to present them in an effective and consistent way?

2. Once the model of timeline is agreed on, students are given a part of the book to work with- in my case each of 10 students got a chapter, and that covered the whole book, but it can be pairs doing a 3-chapter part etc, whatever works for you.

3. Students are supposed to spend 15-20 minutes on their respective parts and produce 5-10 hexagons with sentences written on them representing events chosen for their timeline.

4. Next, they place their hexagons to visually create a timeline together - a snake, a line, a tree….there are many possibilities that could help to reflect the storyline development best.

5. Once the timeline is in place, students read/present their part to the ready of the group, and others are supposed to write down any issues/ problems/ topics this particular part of the book addresses. These are written on ‘bricks’, which are in fact erasable cuttings from laminated pages.

6. After all the topic bricks are in place, students are asked to produce questions linking the topic to the content of the book eg. The topic is ‘betrayal’ and the question is ‘Do you think Miranda’s affair with Adam can be considered betrayal, if he is just a machine?’ etc

7. An interesting discussion follows- it could be done in pairs, groups or among the whole class. A nice thing is that students stand up, move, interact and get quite creative and personal:)

Enjoy!

Comments

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