HyperDocs

My grade 6 Lang & Lit partner teacher introduced me to HyperDocs this year. I have so much respect and appreciation for those who have the time to put together such an in-depth guide. Each chapter had key vocabulary, prompted summaries, exploration of literary devices, as well as additional activities and materials to help students make connections to the content and dig deeper. A true gem of a resource.

The main downside: I think we tried to do too much.

So caught up in all the additional activities and extension, that I had trouble saying “no” to any of the slides. That would probably have been fine if the HyperDoc was the end-all for our unit, but it wasn’t. We were building up to writing a thematic, 5 paragraph essay. In addition to the HyperDoc, I had lessons designed around gathering evidence, sorting evidence based on relevance and strength, and constructing arguments.

At first, the timing wasn’t a problem. We spent the majority of the first couple of weeks reading the book and getting into the content. In that, the HyperDoc was very useful. But, as we started to concentrate more on Karana’s character development and tracking themes throughout the novel, it became more of a burden on the students and on me. For the students, it became extra homework to keep track of when we didn’t always have time to finish activities in class. For me, it meant I had to remember to follow-up on the students to gauge their progress, despite the fact that we had veered away from many of the HyperDoc activities.

In hindsight, I wish we had given it a bigger overhaul before beginning the unit. I would now like to condense chapters together, and include templates and organizers that would have better helped students with the skills needed for our final project. I just suppose this is one of those learning moments where you have to say, “I like that, and would love to include it, but it doesn’t fit right now.” An important lesson I’ve been learning as a teacher: you can’t do everything and if you try, you won’t do anything well.

An example extension activity on otters.

The slide contained links to articles and videos that allowed students to dig deeper into the topic. I really enjoyed these, but had to admit that they didn’t always suit our purpose.