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Last month at book club, when the teens and I were digging into A Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds as we moved around hexagons, I was reminded of just how helpful these slips of paper are to kids. Having manipulatives, these concrete objects that they hold and move, helps them to put into words the abstract relationships they see between people and places and ideas within the story. Are you new to hexagonal thinking? Read this post to learn more!
So when we read Patrick Ness’ A Monster Calls this month, with it’s wealth of symbolism and grief and truth, I knew it was time to create a set of hexagons for this story, too.
When I do this, I include the names of all the characters who make any significant contribution to the story. I include the places I think are most important, as well as the symbols, themes, and major ideas of the story.
I can’t leave out the quotations, either. Sometimes there are just those lines, you know the ones, the kind that perfectly sum up the meaning of a scene, and they beg to be included.
That’s what happened with A Monster Calls. There’s just so much to this story that I had to add extra hexagons, so there are more than usual. Sometimes I worry that maybe there will be too many, that having more hexagons will make it easier to find the connections between them … but then we want our kids to be able to name and describe these connections, and if there’s more to the story, how can I choose to leave those out?
I do include extra, blank hexagons, though, should you decide that something stands out to you that didn’t to me. You could also take away hexagons if you want your students to focus on just themes, or not places, or more heavily on quotations.
That’s a big part of what makes hexagonal thinking activities so wonderful to me. They can be customized in myriads of ways to scaffold your students of any ability.
So I hope that this set of activities for A Monster Calls is beneficial to your students. Dig deep and learn all that the monster has to share with you.
Have you tried hexagonal thinking activities with your students? I’d love to know about your experience in the comments!
