Week # 19

Aleena kicked off the day with the her pitch for being the next President. She had prepared a good presentation and delivered it well.

Next, keeping in line with our theme of public speaking, we tried something new. I have been reading De Bono’s Parallel Thinking, which I would recommend for anyone wanting to be generally a better thinker. In the book, I came across the 6 thinking hats method, which I find very appealing.

As we have been talking about homelessness, I figured it would be an easy topic to explore using the 6 hats method. The adults kept the blue hat for themselves and I distributed the other “hats” to the kids. The kids then spoke in turns, just saying only what is allowed by their hat. It was a good learning experience to see how we struggle with creative (green hat) and optimistic (yellow hat) thinking whereas criticism (black hat) comes in rather easy. It was a fantastic experiment overall, the only failings were because of my own inexperience in how to conduct the activity. We will continue working with this method in our sessions. I have asked my own kids to try and wear the yellow hat all week.

Ideally, we should all be capable of wearing all of these hats simultaneously but it comes with practice. Personally after a couple of rounds, I find the following order works well.

• White hat (Information)
• Red hat (Feelings)
• Yellow hat (Optimism)
• Green hat (Creativity)
• Black hat (Criticism)

We will continue to experiment and tweak. I have asked the kids to use the hats in their writing as well, covering all of the areas in their topics.

How to Learn Faster

Amir selected a video about learning better and faster today. It contains some solid tips that would help anyone learn faster. The video sparked some interesting conversations and we ended up turning this into an activity.

On the 27th of July, we will have a talent show where the kids will have 5 – 10 minutes to present something new they have learned during the next 5 weeks. They would be able to show their newly learned ability on the day or make videos and present them on the day. One winner will be picked and rewarded.

Tasks

• Continue working on the game, it will be presented on the 20th of July
• Learn something new and present on the 27th of July
• Use this interesting tool and report back the vocabulary score
• Parents, to ask the kids “Which continent is New Zealand in?”, learn and discuss