WORKSHEET: THINKING HATS ACTIVITY

This a reader response activity incorporating a thinking hats strategy to express your
response to the story that you have read. THINKING HATS are hats that one puts on in order
to investigate a situation or a problem. In analyzing the meaning of a short story, we can wear
different hats that allow us to talk about the story from different angles. When you wear a
White Hat, you discuss the facts and other objective information about the story. In wearing a
Red Hat, you share feelings and emotional reactions to the story with no need to justify these
feelings. Putting on the Black Hat means that you give a judgment by presenting negative
aspects regarding the story. The opposite happens when you put on a Yellow Hat because you
consider positive aspects found in the story, whether they are about the characters or the
writing style of the author. Sometimes, one goes beyond the story such as when you put on a
Green Hat to consider creative ideas that come from looking at the story in a new way. Finally,
wearing a Blue Hat is when you sum up all that is learned about the story.
Choose from the 3 stories in this module (The Oriental Contingent, Taximan’s Story, and
No Music Before Mosque) and write the information/detail of this story on the right column.

Name Trinidad, Julia Alessandra B. Story The Taximan’s Story

Thinking Hats Reaction/Interpretation of the story

WHITE The taxi driver's narrative changes our perception of Singapore from
What information or an opulent metropolis to a demeaning one. The author did a great job
facts have you of shedding light on complex topics, such as the realities of earning a
picked up from the living with a blue-collar job in a society that excludes those with
story? limited resources and privilege.
RED Encircle the emoji that corresponds to your feelings
How did you feel
while and after
reading the story? Not any of these? How then did you feel?
BLACK I wouldn't say I liked how beating and physical abuse were deemed a
What things did you norm in Asian upbringing and how people take it lightly when
NOT like about the parents hit their children. I also feel sad about the fact that the
story? Taximan had to continue relying on the very people he scrutinizes just
to put food on his family’s table.
YELLOW The Taximan's one-sided discourse brought into sharp relief the
What things did you contrast between Singapore before and Singapore today. His
like about the story? introspection was a genuine construction of a reality that mimics the
actual one and unmasked the actuality of living in the lavish country.
The taxi driver has somehow rebuilt Singapore from the utopian
nation people perceive it to be by contrasting the past with the
present.
GREEN The Taximan's Story represents a societal structure whose
Relate the cultural complacency is disturbed by the fast-paced fight against adolescent
issue in the story moral corruption, sexual exploitation, and economic hardship. The
with what is cab driver assumes the role of this section of society, whose struggles
happening now in remain drowned out by Singapore's faux glamour.
our society.
BLUE Asians were portrayed in the story as family-oriented yet did not
How are Asians practice family planning. The author also painted Asians as average
portrayed in the minimum-wage earners, which was different from the usual good-at-
story? What everything persona. They had conservative beliefs and traditional
influenced their practices that the Taximan valued over the modern world.
actions and ideas?