The Year 8 Gifted & Talented boys spent a day exploring Edward de Bono's 'Six Hats'. The originator of the term 'lateral thinking', de Bono is famous for producing books for the business community. The six hats represent six thinking practices designed to maximise perspective.

The exercise aims to stimulate one's ability to think in six different mind sets in a sequential and systematic way. During normal discussion, people generally adopt one hat and stick to it according to their prejudices. One can challenge people to 'yellow hat' (think positively about) an idea, knowing that they are prejudiced against it. Are they clever enough? The artificiality and game aspect of the method adds to the power of the system: people disassociate the concepts and ideas they are putting forward from their ego and preconceptions. We have run the programme for three years.

This year we focused on the green hat (idea generation). The acronym WORDE stands for wishful thinking, outrageousness, reversal, distortion and exaggeration. By applying these concepts to an idea or theme, we create movement and a change in perspective. We had a very enjoyable time observing how these ideas have been employed in the classic comedy sketches from the past.

Sam Andon, Mathematics teacher