ROLE PLAY: A CENTRE FOR INNOVATIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING

 

ABSTRACT

The importance of creativity has been gaining increasing attention over the last several decades with both practitioners and educators promoting the importance of creative thinking in the classroom. Apart from the traditional methods of teaching the inculcation of innovative strategies will enhances the interest for learning and cognitive skills of learners. This article describes the benefits of considering role playing as an innovative strategy in classroom.

Key words: innovative strategy, role – playing

 

INTRODUCTION

Education innovation is about more than just new technology. It is about addressing a real problem in a novel and straightforward manner in order to promote equity and improve learning. Education innovation scales the solution to the scale of the challenge. It encourages students and teachers to conduct research, explore, and use all available tools to learn something new. It also improves education by forcing students to think at a higher level in order to solve complex problems. Although innovation cannot be tested or graded, it can be instilled and developed in students.

Over the last decade, role play has grown in importance in education. There have been numerous studies conducted on the importance of role plays in assisting children's learning. Role plays can increase student interest in the topic being discussed in class. It can also increase student engagement. Students transition from passive recipients to active participants in the classroom. Students can also develop empathy through role play. It helps them understand different points of view and allows them to see things from another person's perspective.

 

OBJECTIVE

Role play provides insight into case based learning (CBL). It not only helps to enhance communication, psychomotor skills and knowledge but also helps to develop all domains of learning.

SIGNIFICANCE

Education innovation encourages teachers and students to conduct research and use all available tools to create something new. Role-playing is a strategy that allows students to explore genuine scenarios by engaging with other people in a controlled environment in order to gain experience and test alternative techniques. Depending on the purpose of the exercise, participants may be playing a role similar to their own or they may be playing the opposite side of the conversation or interaction. Both alternatives offer substantial learning opportunities, with the former providing for experience and the latter helping the learner to build an understanding of the problem from the 'other' point of view. Participants are assigned specific roles to perform in a discussion or other interaction characteristic of their discipline, such as an email exchange. They may be given precise instructions on how to act or what to say or they may be forced to act and react in their own unique way based on the exercise's objectives. The scenario will then be acted out by the participants, followed by reflection and discussion regarding the interactions, such as various methods of dealing with the circumstance. The story can then be reenacted with alterations based on the results of the contemplation and debate.

 Role play is an innovative technique that assists learners in illustrating ideas or skills by simulating roles and contexts in which ideas and skills would typically be applied. This has some advantages such as:

• ·         It involves direct experimental learning.
• ·         Motivate and engage students.
• ·         Make chances for peer critique available.
• ·         Improve present teaching practices
• ·         Provide pupils with real world circumstances to help them learn.
• ·         Develop real world skills such as negotiation, discussion, teamwork, corporation, persuasion.
• ·         Develop systematic understanding.
• ·         It facilitates learning across different areas of curriculum content.
• ·         It facilitates expression of attitude and feelings.
• ·         It helps to make abstract problems more concrete.
• ·         It helps to manipulate knowledge in exciting and novel way.
• ·         It provides immediate feedback.

THEORETICAL OVERVIEW

The theory of role play is based on experiential learning. Many influential educational theorists have written about the value of experiential learning, including Dewey, Lindeman, and Kolb. Role play is an effective experimental technique which can enhance the interest and perspective about learning among the adult students. Here the students take on real-world roles and must apply and develop the knowledge and skills needed to handle the situation or solve the problem presented. I apply the strategy of role- playing in 9^th standard students and they coordinate and perform very well. It reflects in manipulate the knowledge in exciting and novel way.

Kolb’s experiential learning cycle

 

The cone of learning

EVALUATION

This innovative work was extremely beneficial to the students in terms of improving their attention, memory, productivity, and problem-solving abilities. It also resulted in improved student collaboration. Almost 90% of the students mastered the subject.

In addition to that the method seems to be interesting for students. Apart from the traditional teaching method, an innovative work is good Good for students with low attention span as it effectively retains students’ attention because of the colorful interface. It helps to create a sense of responsibility, accomplishment and maturity in students as they are solely responsible for every decision they take in the course of their projects and assignments. Yet it enables students to see the practical applications of the concepts they have been taught as they try their hands on what they were taught. It will help to creates long lasting memory/correlation of a concept because of the experiential learning method. It facilitates collaborative work among students. In collaborating during assignments, peer tutoring was often possible among students’ where knowledge is passed on from one person to another. The main advantage is Students tend to perform better, i.e. research showed that student taught chemistry using role playing performed better than those taught using conventional methods.

 

EFFECT OF THE INNOVATIVE WORK

The main learning goal for role play is to learn the knowledge and ability required to approach or deal with a specific situation. The learner gains this knowledge and ability by acting out the situation in a controlled environment, and by reflecting on that experience. Simply saying, the active participation in the innovative work reflects on their content knowledge. This helped me understand the significance of innovative teaching. The overall impression was positive.  I discovered that role play helps students understand a topic better than a typical classroom experience. Students' responses and feedback exceeded my expectations.

EXPERIANCE AS PHYSICAL SCIENCE TEACHER DURING SCHOOL INTERNSHIP

As a part of B. Ed. curriculum, in the 3rd semester of our, course we were sent to different schools for the school internship program. I was sent to St. Mary's Girls High School, Athirampuzha. I was assigned the standards 9A, 9E, 8B, 8C and 8D there.

I had to take 50 lesson plans on physics and chemistry. I got the chapters "work energy power", "gravitation" and "current electricity" in standard 9, "water", "metals",solutions" and "polymer" and "magnetism" in standard 8. I preand the lesson plan according to the learning objectives. I divided these chapters in to 50 lesson plans. Ichoose group activities, demonstration and group discussion as learning strategies. A plenty of activities were included in the lesson plans.

This time I wasn't tensed. I was able to manage the class very well and the concepts were conveyed clearly to the students. To make the class more interesting, I have included activities during the class and students actively participated in those activities. Especially the demonstration classes helped a lot to gain their interest in learning.

Sometimes my confidence level getting lowed because of my lack of communication skill. My fluency in English was not good. I think I had to improve it only through constant practice. However, I try to do my level best in all classes that I take.

The training period gave me good experience as a physical science teacher. I enjoyed these 4 months of training and improved a lot as a good teacher. It, gave me an opportunity to improve my teaching skills. My mentors of that particular institution showed their heartfelt support throughout my training period. It helped me to become a good teacher and a good person too.

Through this internship program, I reflected on my own teaching and realized my strengths and weaknesses. It also paved the way to become a professionally successful physical science teachers.