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

Bloom’s balls!

You might think in a secondary classroom there is no room for such ‚primary school crafts’, which require the actual, not digital (!) cutting and pasting. Wrong! Students of all ages and levels should be encouraged to get creative and use all their senses and body to construct knowledge:) It is useful and fun:) My students recently applied and practised lower and higher order thinking skills described by Bloom in his taxonomy (LOTs and HOTs). The ‘Bloom’s Balls they created was a project to wrap up our reading of ‘The Giver’ by Luis Lowry (highly recommended for teenage groups, btw!). The students were given a selection of tasks labelled with the six tiers of Bloom’s taxonomy, and a template with pentagons to cut and paste:) You can find the template below- it is a picture, you might want to manipulate with its size to fit the page:) Their job was to choose 2 tasks from each category, and complete them on their ‚ball’. The tasks were diverse, with different levels of difficulty an

a Canva lesson on 'cancel culture'

I have recently watched an excellent series entitled 'Douglas is cancelled' (I can really recommend this SkyShowtime production), and it inspired me to plan a lesson on the phenomenon of 'cancel culture'. I ended up preparing a Canva presentation with links to a New York Post article, together with vocabulary work and open questions, as well as a set of listening comprehension and discussion questions based on a CBSN video exploring the question if cancel culture has gone too far maybe. You can find the presentation here - a cherry on top is 2 paper 1 mock questions- hope you like it! (key and lesson ideas in the presentation notes)

Into the new year with a compass

Today post will be just a brief but enthusiastic and heartfelt recommendation of a wonderful resource, namely YearCompass that you will find here. This is a free, downloadable pdf that provides lots of creative and reflective ideas on how to let go of 2023 and embrace the year ahead, individually or at a group meeting, as well as an English B lesson:) According to the authors: YearCompass is a booklet designed to help individuals reflect on the past year and plan for the year ahead. It contains carefully selected questions and exercises to guide you through the process of reviewing, learning from, and celebrating the year you're leaving behind, as well as dreaming, planning, and preparing for the new year (Page 2). By going through the exercises in YearCompass, you can gain insights into your past year, including your accomplishments, challenges, and the lessons you've learned. This reflection can help you set meaningful goals and intentions for the year ahead, across vario

#LESSON IDEAS

#EDTECH

#INSPIRATIONS

#IB ENGLISH B

Search This Blog