De Bono's Six Hats as a tool to respond to texts

Edward de Bono’s Thinking Hats is a tool that is used by individuals and groups, often in business- in industries such as finance, healthcare and manufacturing- for problem solving and brainstorming. It has recently been used in online teacher training. See here for an interesting article on training physical education teachers. It can also be used in the classroom to develop the students’ skills of analyzing things from different perspectives, as well as to develop their critical thinking. It additionally promotes inclusivity and ensures that all participants are actively engaged in group work.

In case the technique is new to you, basically it involves six hats – blue, green, red, yellow, black , white- and this allows for a group of people to explore a problem from a range of perspectives instead of looking at it from a narrower point of view only. Each hat represents one particular way of thinking (blue = process, green = creative, red = feelings, yellow = benefits, black = cautions, white = facts).  One hat may be assigned to each participant or to the whole group. The hats are rotated until all the perspectives have been discussed.  It is a very powerful and successful tool in many situations. You can read more about it here Six Thinking Hats 

I’m sure you can think of many uses for such a process both in the classroom and in teacher training situations, such as discussing an open ended topic, analyzing articles and as a self reflective tool at the end of a lesson, to reflect on different aspects of what has been learned, as well as for trainee teachers to reflect on their lesson from different perspectives.

It is important to be culturally aware of your context when using the thinking hats and perhaps thinking about the significance of particular colors in the culture within which you are teaching. For example, in China wearing a green hat  could be associated with an unfaithful spouse. Also, you have to be careful when using the black hat, as it could be associated with fault finding, and may need to be replaced by grey for example. There may very well be other issues that you can think of for your context, but it’s always better to check in case you are not aware of them.

There are so many potential uses for the six thinking hats, but I’m just going to share one more unusual way in which I used the concept in my literature circles, when the students reached the end of their set book.

I previously blogged about using Flipgrid as a review tool, and the thinking hats activity is an alternative to that. Have a look at that blog and at my blog on how to set up and run a literature circles book club. The process using de Bono’s hats is like the Flipgrid activity in reverse. With the Flipgrid method, the students initially complete an individual written book review and then record a short video and respond to others. The interaction pattern develops from the individual to the group. This is good for allowing the students to think independently and then to discuss their own thoughts with the other members of the group.

The interaction pattern used with the de Bono’s hats is the opposite of that. It is a more supportive pattern, as the students initially work together, and then they will complete the same written book review as they do in the Flipgrid lesson, individually. It really depends on your particular group of students, but it is very good to use when the students may be a bit less confident or not have much to write about.

The two resources I used were De Bono’s Hats and Wordwall, and this is what I did.

After the students have finished the final chapter of their book for the book club, they are told to think about the book as a whole for the next session, and especially on the effect it has had on them. They should have quite a lot to think about, as they have already explored each chapter in detail from a wide range of perspectives through their use of the role cards, which they completed at the end of each chapter.

I created and shared an activity on Wordwall to use for the lesson and you can see it here, and please feel free to use it. Wordwall is a wonderful tool, which I use frequently. If you're not already using it, check it out in the link above. You can create your own interactive resources, or use many of the ready made ones which others have shared.  

At the beginning of the lesson, the students are put into pairs . The screen is shared with the whole group, and the Wordwall activity is displayed. On Wordwall there are various activities that can be selected using the same resource. I chose the 'Random card's, but 'Open the Box' and 'Random Wheel' can also be selected and work well. You simply click on ‘switch templates’. This activity is designed to also promote learner autonomy, and the idea is that the teacher removes her/himself from the process as much as possible. The students take turns to click on ‘deal’ and ‘shuffle’ the cards. When the cards are dealt, one of the hats will be revealed and the type of thinking e.g. Red hat: feelings. When they know what card it is the students then have to go to a Google doc which has been shared in their Literature Circles Folder. On that doc they will be able to read a series of questions which I have prepared for each of the six hats.  For example for the red hat the questions will be : How did you feel at the end of the book? Did you like or dislike the main character, and why do you feel like this? How did you feel when the main character did…? Did you like the story? and why/ why not?

The students are put into pairs in breakout rooms and given a time to discuss these questions. At the end of the time they come back and report back on their ideas to the whole group. This allows for a wider sharing of ideas. The process is repeated until all the hats have been selected and discussed.

As I said before, the follow on from this is that the students will now be able to reflect on all the opinions they discussed and heard and be in the position to write their own individual book review, with plenty of good ideas. The book review is previously shared in the same Google folder. There are many book reviews available, but the ones I used were taken from Twinkle 

This is a very interactive and engaging way of  doing a book review.  It is sometimes extremely hard for students to come up with their own ideas when having to complete a task like this. The procedure I have outlined is a good way of providing reassurance and support and giving the students the opportunity to benefit from the views of others, and from thinking about the book in a variety of ways that would possibly not have occurred to them otherwise. The resulting individual written book reviews using this process tend to be more thoughtful and of a higher quality, in that they make use of a wider range of both vocabulary and ideas.