Thinking Hats & IWBs
Today we had all six classes of year 8 English (two classes working together each time) complete an activity based on de Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats. We are studying A Bridge To Wiseman’s Cove (an excellent book by James Moloney) and to break things up a bit, we opened up the dividing wall between the two classes, divided the two classes into 10 smaller groups, with each group looking at a particular character. The groups then had to look at their character through the lens of the red hat (emotions), green hat (ideas – predictions), white hat (facts), Black hat (criticisms), Yellow hat (positives) and blue hat (summary of other hats). At the end of the session, each group had to present their findings to the wider group.
The activity seemed to work really well, with students finding evidence to support each of their points, and it was really interesting to see them having to look for the positives in undesirable characters.
The IWB file made it really easy to keep track of the time allocated for each hat, and gave the students a visual cue as to what they needed to be focused on during that time period.
I did receive the comment at the end of the day by another teacher who wasn’t 100% sure about what they gained from the lesson, as much of the information presented by her students had already been covered when they constructed individual mind maps for each of the characters earlier in the novel study. I’m sure this is true to a certain extent, however, I think that they were also picking up new things and were forced to think deeper than they had previously done about their character. In addition to this, it will also have reinforced and built upon the work that was done earlier in the novel.
I do think highly of this teacher and think that we have to look critically at our lessons, making sure that we review what student learning took place.
