How To Use Six Thinking Hats In The Classroom?

S I X T H I N K I N G H AT S

Y
ou might have heard about the six thinking hats as a useful thinking tool. And you might ask how to bring it into the
classroom as a learning tool for students? We will explain below how this thinking tool can be applied in the classroom.

How to use six thinking hats in the classroom? You can use six thinking hats as a thinking tool to help facilitate your
students’ learning in the classroom. It can be used within group activity, whereby each student can take on
different thinking hats’ role in the group. This provides students with a framework to engage in group discussion from all
perspective. Also a great way to ensure each student contributes to the group activity and explore different opinions.

Download Free Flashcards

Implement six thinking hats in your classroom today with these Edugage designed “Six Thinking Hats Flashcard“.

Having a good knowledge of the six thinking hats idea will be the key to implement it well in your classroom. Below, we will talk more
about the six thinking hats, its bene ts, and our step-by-step advice to use six thinking hats in a group activity.

What is six thinking hats?

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Six thinking hats is a mental model developed by Edward De Bono. It is used to help explore different perspectives.

Each thinking hat represents a unique thinking perspective. This helps an individual to explore different viewpoints relating to a
problem if they were to think from all six hats.

Thinking Hats (Color) Perspective

Blue Process
White Facts
Green New Ideas
Yellow Bene ts
Red Feelings
Black Problems

Table of Thinking Hats & their perspectives

It is useful to use all the thinking hats for decision-making, group-thinking, and problem-solving. This makes thinking thorough with all
possible perspectives being covered.

Bene ts of six thinking hats in group activity

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As educators you are very busy with teaching and administrative responsibilities. Spending your precious time to understand and
implement six thinking hats in your classroom must make bene cial sense. Here we will highlight the bene ts of using six thinking
hats for group activity.

In brief, the bene ts:

Develop critical thinking

Develop innovative thinking

Preparation of fruitful discussion

Ensure each student participate

Expose different types of thinking

Fun to role-play

Develop critical thinking

Combining the blue, white, yellow and black thinking hats together can help students develop critical thinking. These thinking hats
provide a systematic approach to lay out a situation.

Students will be guided logically when analyzing a situation. This builds a great foundation for students’ critical thinking skill.

Develop innovative thinking

Combining the green and red thinking hats together can help students develop innovative thinking. Further, together these two hats
can nurture students’ creativity.

Here is how it can work well together: The green hat tries to come up with new ideas. While the red hat uses intuition. Together, an
intuition can make new ideas practicable and unique. This cultivates innovative thinking.

Preparation of fruitful discussion

With the six thinking hats tool, a group discussion will unlikely end up at one perspective.

This singular perspective can commonly happen in group discussion. This is a result when group members have similar dominant type
of thinking. This prevents different perspective from surfacing in discussion.

Thus, using the six thinking hats can set up a group discussion to be more productive.

Ensure each student participate x

Assigning each student with a thinking hat in a group will ensure their participation in the activity. This will avoid the common issue,
where students do not participate in group activity. For example, some students in a group might choose not to contribute, while a few
students in the group might dominate the discussion.

With a systematic approach that focuses on expressing each thinking hat, all the students in the group will be ensured at least a
speaking opportunity. This will ensure participation of all students within the group.

Expose different types of thinking

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The greatest bene t of the thinking hats is its use to bring about different types of thinking.

Commonly, we all have a tendency towards a type of thinking or perspective, which we prefer. However, it might not be a bene cial
learning experience for students to be con ned in their own preference of thinking.

Exposing students to different types of thinking can broaden their thinking capability. This can lead to bene cial learning outcomes in
their study.

With this exposure, they will become better at analyzing problems from different perspective to nd solutions.

Fun to role-play
Role-playing is a teaching tool that makes classes fun and enjoyable. Through the in-build role-play nature of the six thinking hats,
students will have a fun time, and will be more engaged.

Step-by-step advice on using six thinking hats in group activity

With an understanding of the six thinking hats, you are now ready to plan and implement it in group activity.

1. Decide on the topic or problem for the group activity

Choosing the right topic or problem for the group activity will make full use of the six thinking hats. This allow your students to reap
the most bene t from the six thinking hats.

When deciding on the topic or problem, you should choose something that can be discussed about, whereby there is no one right
answer to the problem. It should be an open-ended topic or problem. This will be ideal for using the six thinking hats to explore
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different perspectives.

In contrast, you should avoid topics or problems with clearly de ned answer, such as solving simple mathematical questions. These
type of questions relies on logical thinking, and not all thinking hats can be involved in solving it. Thus, they are not ideal to use as
group activity with six thinking hats.

2. Form groups of 6 students

There are six thinking hats, so you will need to form groups of 6 students. If there are not enough students to form a group, you can
have a smaller group whereby some students will have to use 2 or more thinking hats.

3. Clearly explain each thinking hat role to the class

Before the start of the group activity, you must be sure that your students understand the role-play with the six thinking hats. You will
have to explain each thinking hat role to your class.

Then allow your students to decide which of the six thinking hats they like to be in their own group.

To further help you with the group activity, we have made ashcard for each thinking hat. You can download it below, print one set of
six thinking hats ashcard for each group.

Download Free Flashcards

Implement six thinking hats in your classroom today with these Edugage designed “Six Thinking Hats Flashcard“.

The ashcard can be an ongoing guide for your students to refer to the thinking hat they have chosen.
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4. Instruction on the sequence of thinking hat
Tell your students to follow the sequence of thinking hats from Blue > White > Green > Yellow > Red > Black. This systematic
sequence helps to open up the group discussion in a optimal way.

5. Monitor and facilitate the group activity progress

Lastly, as your group activity is underway, remember to monitor how your students are involved in the group activity. If there are
groups of students that are stuck, and not in a discussion, do help and facilitate the group discussion. Try to facilitate just enough to
get the students moving ahead with their discussion.

There will also be some students that have dif culty understanding the six thinking hats. You will have to explain in greater detail for
them to understand. A common dif culty is when a student nds it hard to relate the thinking hat perspective to the topic. You should
prepare in advance some hints and prompts to help them out.

Related Questions
Can six thinking hats be used for reading comprehension? Yes, six thinking hats can be used to improve students’ reading
comprehension. It acts as a framework for students to analyze an article or novel from different perspectives. This helps students to
comprehend their reading in a wholesome way.

Additional Reads For Teachers

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Engage Your Students & Level Up Your Teaching (Getting Edugaged)

What Is Edugage? video

>>Click Here to START your edugaged journey<<

TAGS Classroom, Teaching, Thinking Tool

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Shaun /
 Casual writer on engaging education topics.

Engage & Learn

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