Role Playing as a Strategy for Teachers

Thirteen year old Muskaan was signing some important documents, while her personal assistant stood beside her table with a paper and a pen. Every now and then, she consulted with her assistant before resuming with her work. And, let me tell you, this young girl was definitely not a part of the busy, corporate world yet.

Muskaan was at school and it was her Political Science session.

Ah, I already see a few wrinkled eyebrows out there!

Okay, let me crack the puzzle for you, dear friends. This young teenaged student was engaged in an intensely thrilling role-playing activity in her class. Her History teacher had instructed her to enact the role of a President, in order to interpret the duties of a President – that was included in the academic curriculum of the school.

Ms. Mira Khan, the History teacher had come up with this special teaching strategy when she realized that her pupils were dozing away during their lessons.

I am not kidding.

And, I bet students all across the world, as well as teachers, can relate to my words.

However, when Ms. Khan discovered that her students were simply bored due to the ‘seemingly dull’ History sessions, she decided to spice up things in her classroom.

That’s how she conceived the brilliant idea of ‘role playing’.

Now, her students were livelier than ever and intensely absorbed in their lessons. For, they were ‘play-acting’ certain concepts or topics of Political Science to understand them. It helped them focus on their lessons better, checking their tendency to slip into daydreams in the midst of an academic session.

Why Employ Role-Play in Classrooms?

It is popularly believed that for learning to be effectual, it needs to be:

• memorable
• smart
• interactive

Now, to fulfill all these three criteria, education must allow space for plenty of creativity. And, for creativity to creep in, educators should work unitedly towards making the learning processes more convenient for learners – and that can be made possible only through inspiring ‘imagination’.

Trust me, imagination is the most powerful key that can enable young minds to unlock their true creative potential.

I personally feel creative students are usually the most successful ones, too. Therefore, education instructors and facilitators should encourage students to utilize their imagination from a very tender age. Doing so would empower them to develop innovative ideas to simplify learning, making it more productive!

The noted teacher, author and trainer Jeremy Harmer highly recommends the system of role-playing for educational institutions mainly due to the following reasons:

• The process is extremely fun as well as motivating.
• Introverts gain a golden opportunity to share their individual thoughts effortlessly.
• Explores education beyond the territories of the traditional classroom environment by providing a scope for a greater number of thrilling classroom events.
• Diversifies language opportunities by experimenting with various learning techniques.
• Helps students to analyze the relationship between the behavioral patterns of people and the outcomes of certain events.
• Assists students to identify different choices and solutions.
• Enhances the problem-solving skills of learners by instilling the essence of creativity.
• Equipping students with essential English language skills, thereby grooming them beautifully for their higher education or career opportunities in an English-speaking nation.

Procedure of Role Playing in Classrooms

The idea of role-playing, therefore, in a nutshell, is to indulge in a great deal of creativity in academic institutes. The objective: to make learning more interesting for all kinds of learners. This is solely the reason why teachers can try out this teaching ideology with students of almost all ages.

One thing you must bear in mind while implementing the role-playing approach is that the complexity of the role-playing circumstances should be diminished while teaching younger kids.

This is because the attention spans of school-kids never exceed over a time frame of about 25 to 30 minutes. If you are capable of creating an excellent role-playing model keeping this fact in mind, you can also use it for educating preschoolers or students of primary levels.

Let me now introduce you to the manifold procedures of role-playing as a strategy for teachers.

#1. Preparation of the Event

Firstly, you should gear yourself up for the role-playing event.

This, of course, is inclusive of a series of rules. If you follow them, I am certain that you can develop an elaborate game-plan to explain the academic lessons to your students, albeit with a marked difference!

Continue reading to learn more about the tips for preparation.

• Identifying the Issue Appropriately: Are your students unable to grasp the basic concepts of a particular topic? Or, are they completely unaware of the perfect study techniques to master the core concepts of the idea? I have come across some pupils who are at their wit’s end attempting to memorize complicated definitions of subjects.

• Establishing the Situation: Now that you are ready with you initial idea of the role-play, you got to get your students ready. Make sure your students are familiar with the central theme of the play and how it is connected with the main educational theory.

• Casting the characters: Are you done creating the skeletal framework of the play? If yes, you should focus on the various characters of the proposed role-playing session. Select your students intelligently and assign them judicious roles that they would love to enact.

#2. Communicate the Rules Clearly

Communicate the guidelines for the role-play to each of the participants. Your students must be well aware of the character they are about to enact and its significance. You can do this quite simply.

• Using volunteers: Requesting for volunteers who are willing to actively participate in the entire process of the role-play in your classroom. They can go about the task, either in small groups or individually. As a teacher, you might not choose to be a part of this activity.

• Divide students into groups: Another impressive way of doing it is to divide your students into a few groups if it suits the requirements of the topic or subject.

• Model the role-play: Prepare a script of the play after a discussion with your pupils about the subject. It helps to create a rough model of the role-playing activity and gives students a brief idea about the same.

#. 3. Play-act the Situation or Character

If possible, model the role-play in a detailed format and act it out for your students to take a cue. This would aid all kinds of students, particularly visual as well as kinesthetic learners in the classroom.

Follow the next few guidelines if you are keen to play it out for your learners the smart way.

• Act Out to Make It Easier for kids to follow: When you act it out, students find it easier and less complicated – in terms of the lesson and the characters they are told to play. Students are excited to learn about new topics simply because they love imitating their teachers in a particular act that helps them learn about the topic more deeply.

• Move around and observe: You should observe how your students are performing and give them your honest feedback. When students notice that teachers are interested in assessing their progress while they are pre-occupied in activities that disperse the monotony of classroom lectures, they feel more encouraged.

#4. Discuss the Role-play

Finally, squeeze out some time to contemplate the performance of your students in their respective roles.

Would your pupils succeed in portraying the features of the situation or character they have been instructed to play?

Teachers can discuss the following things after a session of rigorous role-playing.

• Urging pupils to share: You can begin your process of discussion by urging your students to express their feelings or thoughts they had experienced while they had been presenting their performance. Sharing their personal ideaswould improve their learning experience from the role-play.

• Body language of the students: Make sure you inspect the body language exhibited by each of your pupils during their performance of the play. How many of them were able to convey the message of their character? If any of them were incapable of doing so, I would suggest you sit with him and discuss the issues to solve those.

• Relate the play to real-life: How is the play similar to real life? Using real-life examples and attractive illustrations, discuss it with your students.

Tips for Utilizing Role-play inside Classrooms

Enacting a role inside a class is truly a rewarding experience.

Moreover, it can prove to be really beneficial in helping learners attain high grades in exams. It is high time teachers start exploring beyond the chalk-and-blackboard style of imparting education and try out something more effective and sophisticated.

I have a few tips up my sleeves that can guide you to find out the best ways to employ role-playing inside classrooms.

• Begin with simple situations: It is a good idea to begin with fairly simple situations, gradually progressing to the more complex ones. This would attract the attention of all students, including those who prefer to be back-benchers throughout the year.

• Don’t forget to use humor: A pinch of humor in your lectures can breathe a new life into the most challenging or boring lessons. It can work wonders for shy students, or those who tend to be introverts and thus, are reluctant to participate in classroom discussions.

• Minimize the level of complexity: You should always aim to minimize the amount of complexity that might be intrinsically associated with your lesson while you are modeling role-play for students. It would ensure that your pupils are exposed to academic theories in a more subtle way.

Like every other learning tactic, role-playing too has its own share of merits and demerits. Having said that, the advantages outweigh the demerits.

Here’s a quick look at the benefits of this sort of a teaching procedure.

• Promotes active participation

One of the topmost merits of role-play learning is that it is compelling enough to inspire youngsters to participate in the class actively. I am sure most teachers have come across certain learners who hesitate to raise their hands when a question is asked.

Then, there are a few others who would nod their heads in approval when you inquire if they have understood a certain theory or law in Physics.

However, they struggle to complete assignments or projects related to the topic and often end up with miserable grades in exams. Role-playing would easily do away with such issues. For, students would be curious to learn lessons if they are asked to act it out as they do in ‘dumb charades’.

• Develops communication skills

When students put their best foot forward in representing any character or situation, they are actually improving their interpersonal skills. What’s more, they do not even realize it! This makes their performance spontaneous.

It makes them good communicators who are able to send their message across successfully.

They improvise scenes on the spot that enriches their personality with some of the best communication skills that they would not have been able to imbibe in a personality development course!

So, never say no next time your teacher instructs you to take part in a role-playing activity at school. After all, your potential employers would prefer candidates with top-notch communication skills rather than the ones who lack them.

• Improves long-term retention

Another reason why I would advocate role-playing is, it actually aids in building long-term retention of facts.

For instance, you have studied about a particular topic for the last one and a half hour. Yet, you are on the verge of tearing your hair in utter frustration simply because you are not being able to memorize the definitions of that very thing. And as a result, you score just five out of twenty in your next class-test!

Unfair, isn’t it?

Yes, indeed it is. However, if you indulge in acting out the situation or an idea related to the topic you are studying, you would discover that you can strengthen your long-term memory to a large extent.

These are some of the numerous merits associated with role-playing. And, if you follow my tips to introduce this special teaching technique in your classroom, your students would actually be desperate to attend your classes! You can do a bit of research to find more innovative teaching ideas.

Best of luck for your efforts at implementing role-playing in the classroom, dear teachers.