Thank you, thank you, thank you for this great topic idea!
Since its too late in the year for me to teach any new language that I plan to test students on in the final, I was looking for a more open-ended speaking activity to teach this next week, especially for my high-level classes. I was searching waygook for ideas and I came across this gem. I was worried that it would be too abstract for my students to 'get' it, or that they might find it boring and not want to participate. I couldn't have been more wrong. I actually got students to actually VOLUNTEER to present their writing for the first time this semester. I especially enjoyed the group that decided to describe the co-teacher. For the green hat they wrote "What if he wore a bikini in class?"
This is how I presented the lesson:
After doing the warm-up puzzle, I showed them a picture with the of a human head with six colored hats on it (an image I found on Google, I think it was a book cover). I asked students what they saw and to speculate on what it could mean. I then introduced the day's topic and explained the basic idea of the 6 Thinking Hats.
Then I took a brief detour to pre-teach some language that they might not be familiar with: fact, emotions, creative, invented, and conclusion.
I then passed on the Oreos worksheet and explained each of the 6 Thinking Hats. I'd explain the basic idea for that thinking hat and ask students how that hat would apply to Oreos. I'd then show students my example statements about Oreos. I asked students to write down one thing about Oreos for each hat on their paper (the first class I ran this on, my students were trying to write down everything I had on the slide, which was overkill). This ensures that students have to pay attention, and will serve as their model during their production activity.
To check understanding, I then went through a series of example statements about various companies and products, and asked students which hat the statement belonged to.
That been accomplished, I then asked students to work in teams of 2 or 3, choose a topic (of their own making or one that I had written up on the board), and write down a statement about that topic for each hat. The writing portion took about 15 minutes.
Then we spent the last 10 minutes of class by having each team present their statements and having other teams guess what they were describing.
You can find my presentation below, in keynote or powerpoint format (powerpoint lacks some of the pretty transitions). If you don't have a Mac, and don't need to make changes to the presentation but what all the pretty transitions, you can use the video file version at the following link, which must be played in QuickTime:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ebnsjwere9pd9qi/6%20Thinking%20Hats%20-%20No%20Warmup.mov.
