First go with SOLO Hexagons with Year 10's

It was my first lesson with my new Year 10 class today so I thought it would be a good start to the project to try using SOLO hexagons.
We had some fantastic whole staff PD on Friday from +Pam Hook where she talked about the use of hexagons to make connections across information and separate facts.

We are designing and making a 3D printed model of 3D speakers this year with Year 10.
Their task today ( after exercising their cutting out fingers ) was to put everything they could come up with about portable speakers onto hexagons. We had a brief discussion before hand about what sort of things they could add, like materials, use, power, size, connectivity etc...
It was their's and my first time at this so I felt a little chat about areas they could talk about wasn't cheating too much.

Here they are filling in their hexagons with the ideas.

They then had to work in small teams to put their hexagons into groups. I was listening to some great discussions about what to put with what and why. Of course as soon as I got the camera out, they stopped!!

As they were finishing their groupings, I was going round to take photographs. These were uploaded to the Year 10 Google Plus community.
The students then had to go onto the community to write in the comment sections of their photographs about the reasons why those hexagons were grouped together. The key word for thnking about what to write was "because".

Here are some screen shots of the posts in the community.... if you want to see them in detail, the link to the community is here.

I feel that this was a positive way to start a new project. It got the students thinking analytically about the problem before they have been given the design brief.

Things that went well :-

• Students thinking analytically right from the start.
• Confidence in what they were doing through working in teams.
• Straight into the project, no fluffing around.

What needs work :-

• The smaller teams worked better at this than larger ones where there was a "sit out".
• This was my first time doing this so my instructions for the activity were not top banana.

Planning ahead :-

• Pre-cut the hexagons.
• Give some key words out to see where they fit them into the links.
• Charge the iPads to use as cameras so they can take their own photos and upload them to the community and maybe record themselves / each other verbally explaining the links and connections.