Filling in the Holes
Our year sevens are studying Holes for the first time this year. One of the activities I got the students to do last week was to try to identify some of the links between characters and over time. I was originally going to get the students to create a mind map using a new tool I’ve found, called Webspiration. It is basically an online version of the concept mapping software, Inspiration. Unfortunately our network doesn’t have the latest version of flash so I had to think of an alternative. I then turned to bubbl.us and created the mind map below which contains most of the major characters. I started to create links between the characters but, unlike webspiration, I cannot write down why they are linked. I therefore had this up on the screen and the students had to come up with their own links for each of the characters. As the links were left blank, students could use their knowledge of the novel to come up with links of various depth. It was amazing to hear the range of different links that the students came up with for each of the characters.
Following on from this, I then got them to construct a timeline of the novel using 36 cards from the scholastic website. I had intended to use the website itself and the Holes Match ‘em up game, but we had the same flash issue. It was interesting to see the different strategies employed by the students to complete this task, some working systematically, some working in teams, while others seemed to have no particular strategy.
Both of these activities worked well with my classes and they were extremely motivated to get both tasks done. When studying next year, I would like to use webspiration as the students then have to create the whole mind map and have to link the characters themselves, rather than having links already made and then just working out what the links are. I could also use the IWB more in getting the students to come up and make the links between the characters, rather than having them already there.
