How do I fix a very large hole in my ceiling?

O.k. so I'm renting an older house turned into an apartment building and a friend of mine went into the attic and fell through the ceiling (after we told him not to) he's going to help us pay for a fix it but we're not sure how to go about doing it. The hole is probably 3ft long and 1 ft. wide and it looks like its drywall. I thought maybe get a large peice of drywall cut it, nail it to the beams in the attic and then blend it into the rest of the ceiling with some kind of putty. Its a drywall ceiling with no texture. I've been reading about having to get mesh tape and boards with holes in it, frankly i'm confused with so much information out there. Is anyone who has done this before and had it be a success? Or any BEST way of doing it?