Lit Hexagons Final

This year for my spring semester final I decided to do something a bit different than what I had done before. Our exam schedule necessitates that our exam takes about an hour and a half, but because all sections of our class take the exam at the same time, in different rooms, it would be difficult to do listening and speaking on the day of the final so we often use our final class period to do those portions of the final, leaving reading and writing for the actual day of the final.

This semester I also found myself finishing a unit with just less than two weeks of class and needed to figure out something to fill the time in a meaningful way, while making it flexible enough because students were also going to be taking AP exams and would miss classes.

The solution to all of my problems: Lit Circles! But then I remembered learning from Bertha Delgadillo about Hexagonal Thinking, and how she had students use those at the end of a novel study. So rather than doing Lit Circles, I concocted a plan to do Lit Hexagons as a final assessment: they would do a presentation/listen to presentations the final day of class, and write something about their book on the day of the final.

A quick overview of Hexagonal Thinking: Its like a conspiracy board, students make a hexagon for people, places, themes, concepts, etc. and have to defend how it is connected to one(or multiple) other things. I gave them a sheet of 11 hexagons, they could use more if they needed to, colored paper to organize and paste them, and that is what they would use to present their book to the class.

Before I jumped into all of this I needed to figure out: What books would students be allowed to pick, if I only had 8-9 class periods to do this how much time would students need, what kind of accountability would there be each day, what would they do if they finished the book TOO early, what would the writing prompts for the final be, and what would we do for students who were going to miss class for AP exams (one student had AP exams FIVE of the 8/9 days we worked on this 😱).

As far as choosing books went, I wanted them to be chapter books, have various levels of complexity, and various genres, and hopefully something that would help them learn about the world around them:

A few students who had several AP classes chose a different book from my library, one that they could take with them and read at home if they needed to.

I went through each of the books, checked how many chapters each one had, and took a conservative guess on how much students would need to read per day in order to get the book read. Of course, as students were choosing books, there were a few times a student was looking at a book and I had to guide them to a different book due to the amount of new vocabulary they would be encountering. I wanted to make sure the books students read wasn't TOO much work.

PRO TIP: When students are reading Comprehensible Novels, remind them that as they are reading they should keep a thumb in the glossary so they can quickly access that support when needed.

Daily accountability: For this I had students do a dual entry diary. Essentially at the end of each day they would spend some time writing a summary in Spanish about each chapter they read, AND in English or Spanish a reflection to show that they are thinking about what they read. At the end of the day I would give them a little stamp and check in with what they've read.

I noticed that some kids were reading really fast and I didn't want them to not have something to do, so I printed out some half sheets that explained some literature concepts: Characters, setting, conflict, climax, resolution, and critique. If students finished their book, and made their hexagons early, they would elaborate on each of the concepts to help them prepare for writing more in depth about their book for the final.

Additionally to slow students down a little bit, I made sure to reserve 10-15 minutes of class for discussion, our daily schedule was: 5 minute bellringer, 20-25 minutes for reading and summarizing, and 10-15 minutes of discussion. This year most of the conversation was around hypothetical situations: what would have happened if Harry Potter was killed as a baby? What would have happened if Katniss didn't volunteer for the Hunger Games? Which would also support students for one of the prompt choices for the writing portion of the final.

For the writing prompts, I chose four of Bryce Hedstrom's Focused Book Reports. These are great because they work for any book that a student might read, though some work better than others.

So now that I have a plan for getting students to read the books, make their hexagons, what to do if students finish their books with too many days left, and what their final writing prompts would be I had one more obstacle. What are students doing while others are presenting, and besides being respectful, WHY are they listening to others?

I chose to have students do a variation of book speed dating:

As they listen to their peers they mark how interesting the book seems AND have to give a rationale as to why they would or would not like to read the book.

It's been really fun to watch the students talk about their book, learn new vocab, and find reading enjoyable even though it was still work.

Edit: I forgot to say, before hitting publish, that students who were gone on the day of the presentation have a FlipGrid to submit.