All reading involves “ imagining to learn.” This is the goal to being a successful reader. This chapter focused on Role Playing in order to help students with their imagination. There are different ways of incorporating this strategy, but all the ways need these basic ideas:
1. Frame it- make sure the students know their role and their mission so they can pay can know what to pay attention to in the text.
2. Read aloud- You read so the students can focus on their role
3. State the Scene- Make sure students understand where this role is taking place.
4. Play teacher in Role- As you walk around you might help students or complicate the situation, but this must be done inside the enactment.
Types of Role Play enactments during reading:
1. Literature Circle Drama Roles
a. Summarizing: Telegram Writer/Cell phone Message Writer
b. Visualizing: Illustrator/Photographer
c. Questioning: Reporters/Police
d. Inferencing: Detective? Accountant
e. Problem-solving: Dear Abby/Commentator
f. Predicting and Elaborating: Fortune-Teller/Prophet
g. Monitoring and analyzing: Expert Analyst
h. Monitoring and Digging Deeper: Drama Diva
2. Stranger in Role
3. Parallel Scenes
4. Character Walks
5. Step by Steps
6. Character Think Aloud
Types of Role Play activities for After-Reading
1. Who Am I?
2. Character Surveys
3. Character/Author Interviews
4. Minor Character Monologues
5. Round-Robin Monologues
6. Drama Centers
7. Dress-Up Book Reports
After reading this chapter, I felt somewhat overwhelmed with all the information and strategies given. I feel like enactments are a good idea, but I wonder if they are possible with all the time restraints we as teachers face. I realize that I do not have to do all these enactments, but the more I hear, the more I’m realizing the time that is required to complete them successfully. After completing the outline above, it became more digestible and more focused. I began to realize that I have used many of these strategies within my classroom already. I often use the Inferencing: Detective/Accountant strategy during my slavery unit. Students are asked to reconstruct the travels, life story, finances or thoughts of a major character within their books. I have enjoyed this lesson because it forces students to walk in the shoes of the characters. This makes books come to life and helps scaffold the reading comprehension.
One last bit of information that I would like to share is the way to help students evaluate one another. This book gives three hand frames for students to use to get students to respond to each other.
1. Praise: What I really liked about the presentation was…
2. Questions: Something I had questions about was…
3. Polish: I wonder what would happen if…/what would have happened if…
In my classroom, I often find that students have a difficult time giving praise or advice to others. This frame will be helpful for students to understand what is expected in their evaluations. These evaluations are a great way to get students really listening to their peers and thinking about the content.
The role play of literature circles can be incorporated easily as the students learn the expectations and become involved in the literature. I appreciated the ideas of teaching students how to praise or advice one another. These sentence starters would be a nice mini-lesson and reference poster in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteWhat an exciting and fun way to have students use higher level thinking. You talked about the time constraints in the classroom. Maybe doing these activities during down time, when your class is waiting for the P.E. teacher. While in the hallway waiting for other students to wash hands for lunch. Begin or wrap-up the lesson with the enactments.
ReplyDeleteI wish I had known about these activities when I was doing literature circles. It would have been a nice alternative to the question/answer format. These are such great ideas.
ReplyDeleteI think it's important for students to know why they are doing an activity. I keep in mind before reading, during reading, and after reading strategies to use during reading for my students. Your book seems to have the same theme. I have never really looked at or initiated role playing activities in my classroom. I'm going to have to try it!
ReplyDeleteTeaching students how to praise or advise others is extremely important. I think if we teach our kids to give feedback early on, it will help them to better critique their own work.
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