Empowering Your Pupils Through Role-Play

Exploring Emotions and Building Resilience

Rosanna Morales

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780415447089, 9781138411081
• eBook ISBN: 9781134063383
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

It can be hard to get children to talk about their feelings…

Empowering Your Pupils through Role-play reveals the power of role-play in creating a safe space for students to explore emotions and build resilience through performance, discussion and the sharing of ideas, whilst enabling teachers to meet curriculum outcomes.

Designed to enhance personal development, the practical activities help students become effective communicators and active investigators. Working independently of the teacher, students collaborate with their classmates to build trust, and can be actively involved in group activities, or take part as observers and commentators.

Children know and understand about values by experiencing them, and throughout this book, there are opportunities for teachers to involve their pupils in:

• Performing

• 
  
  

• Writing

• 
  
  

• Directing

• 
  
  

• Drawing

• 
  
  

• Designing

• 
  
  

• Building

• 
  
  

The activities in Empowering you Pupils through Role-play are challenging and designed to move students towards becoming alert and responsible young adults, actively able to engage with others and equipped with the skills to develop relationships and trust. The extensive role-play toolbox contains warm-up games, tips on writing and activities for mime, movement and improvisation.

Teachers of children aged 4-11 with an interest in Personal, Social and Health Education will find this a practical and inspirational text.

Rosanna Morales is an experienced author and teacher.

RESOURCES

Creative role-play activities

Ditto

Statues

Stop the action

From the top

The Village Square

Setting up a role-play area

Warm-up starters

One mouth

Weird positions

Mood zones

Creature feature

Pause

Speakers and actors

Blabber touch

Danger switch

Swift swap

Pick it up

BBC World News

Set alive

Numbers

Tips and hints on writing for a performance

Writing a monologue

The story ball

Sparkers

What’s going on?

Brainstorming

Structuring an interactive play

Interviewing

Ditto

Notes to teachers

This role-play activity introduces an interesting relationship and collaboration between members of a group or class. A great whole-group experience, it will facilitate communication and understanding among the group. By listening to each other’s personal stories, students will see that most experiences are universal. The activity also enables students to get to know members of their class and to feel they are an important part of their school and community.

Ditto can be used to deal with issues concerning the class or the school as a whole. It is a useful activity to welcome or say farewell to a class member.

Classroom layout

Setting up for this activity is very simple and requires only chairs, boxes and basic props.

Ditto

How to

1 An audience member volunteers to be the Narrator.

2 The Narrator (or the teacher or a leader) chooses the actors to play the roles.

3 The Narrator tells a story.

4 When the Narrator has finished the story, the audience shouts ‘DITTO!’.

5 The performers prepare the stage and perform the story.

6 When the performers have finished their presentation, the Leader will ask the Narrator and the audience for any suggestions and whether they think the performance offered good advice.

Try it this way

The performance can take part in the setting of the Narrator’s story. For example, if the story takes place on a hockey pitch, the whole group can go to the pitch to experience the performance in its original setting.

Instead of acting out the story, try using movement and sound effects to create a mood that describes the emotions of the characters in the Narrator’s story.

Statues

Notes to teachers

Students use their bodies to represent feelings, ideas and situations. By creating statues using different body positions, you can project your impression of a situation or feeling.

Audience members can interact by rearranging the shape of the statue, or giving suggestions, to improvise new solutions to the problems being presented.

This activity looks at body language. It can be extended into a discussion about image and how the media take different approaches to delivering information.

Classroom layout

This acti...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Introduction
• BULLYING
• GRIEF
• ANGER
• SELF-ESTEEM
• RESOURCES