Post-it note Discussion Activity:

For post-it discussions, students are given two post-its to write on, and they choose from three options (a quote from the text, a question, something new that they learned) and then they place their post-it notes in a designated Thematic area. These Thematic areas can then be used for further activities such as:

Small group discussions: discuss connections between post-its and how they connect to the theme.

Whole group discussions: connect themes to each other, and have small groups present their findings and connections through a group representative.

These post-it activities can remain on the board for future reference in end-of-unit projects and student study guides for assessments.

HEXAGONAL THINKING: When my students in the Honors Gothic class started book clubs, during my active teacher reflection notes, I noticed that students were having good conversations during class, but I wanted to challenge them more with HOW they were thinking. For some context, students are in separate book clubs, reading separate texts. On this day, students met with their book clubs for the first 20 minutes of class. In these 20 minutes, students discussed their reading homework and the critical discussion questions they made the previous day in class.

Before our Hexagonal Thinking on Friday, students had a topic for each day of the week as follows:

1. Monday: First Book Club Meeting 

2. Tuesday: Characterization 

3. Wednesday: Gothic Elements: Depiction of The Gothic Genre 

4. Thursday: Rhetorical Appeals (primarily Logos, how does logos contribute to the Gothic genre?) 

For each day of the week, when students are collaborating in their book club meeting, they write down any discussion notes, questions, and notes on the topic of that day in a shared group slide. Students can organize this slideshow however they see fit as a group, as long as they reference the topic of the day. For the first 20 minutes of class, this is what students were focusing on.

For the final 30 minutes, students participated as a WHOLE class in the hexagonal thinking activity. For Hexigonal thinking, students were given 10 minutes to write on 5 individual hexagons based on the reading, topics, and discussions covered that week. After completing the hexagons, students worked together to make connections between their individual hexagons, ideas, connections, questions, literary devices, and Gothic elements between the two different texts. During my active reflection, I noticed that this challenged the students more, which was my ultimate goal. After the activity, I asked students for feedback, and a student replied, “It was a lot of fun.”

Ultimately, the hexagonal thinking activity and prior work building up to this day allowed students to think about why they were connecting certain ideas/ hexagons, and allowed them to collaborate and think about another person’s perception and how many different connections can be made.