As I mentioned in my last post I have become very interested in meta cognition. During my final practical I used de Bono's six thinking hats as part of my Home Language listening and speaking lesson for Grade 4 learners. I was worried that the lesson may be quite advanced, but their maturity really astounded me.
I made the hats out of cardboard and attached sticks to them so the learners could use them in a fun, interactive way. Here is a photo of them:
As you can see they have the colour, name and a few key words on them to help the learners understand that the hat represents and how to use it to think about their thinking.
For my lesson, I started by explaining each hat and giving examples of how to use each one. We then sat in a circle and each learner had a turn to roll a story dice and use a hat to dive into their thinking about the specific object on the dice. Their class teacher and I were amazed with the responses. The one little girl who has had a very difficult time with her parents and has finally started living with her wonderful grandparents described the emotion of the picture of a house as, "a place that I can go to that makes me feel warm, safe and loved" (it put tears in our eyes). I then gave them unprepared oral topics and they had a minute to prepare their orals and then speak to the class using as many hats as they could. Unprepared orals are a challenging and intimidating aspect of language for many Grade 4s and I was blown away with the substance and maturity of the orals. What a wonderful lesson!!!
