Roleplaying game
Introduction
Roleplaying works by having the teacher plan a fictional context where the students take on a range of different roles or characters. They work as a team, either small groups or the whole class as a team with the teacher as the game master facilitating the story and guiding students.
Generally, as the team, students are commissioned by a client to work on an assignment, to solve a problem or to work through an experience. These contexts/stories have been planned to generate tasks and activities that will involve them in studying and developing wide areas of the curriculum. They are usually cross curriculum in nature.
An excellent example of these kinds of activities are those generated by the Mantle of the Expert organisation. Mantle of the Expert is created and run by UK teacher Tim Taylor (@imagineinquiry). Rather than write my own I have borrowed one of their free resources to run for this session.
Another cool example of using roleplaying in the classroom is the use of Dungeons and Dragons by teachers. NSW teacher Bec West (@BecWest81) has a YouTube video giving a detailed explanation on how she used D&D to encourage writing in her students.
Activity
This session was adapted from the The Monster by Jenny Lewis, available to download from the Mantle of the Expert website.
It was aimed at Year 1/2 students and I have adapted it slightly to work better for adults and for a group of five players instead of a whole class of young children.
The story
In a village near a mountain and a lake live a group of people. At the bottom of the lake grows a rare plant that the villagers harvest each month. The plant can cure a range of illnesses. The villagers have heard that a monster has recently moved into a cave at the top of the mountain. They have heard rumours that he has done terrible things in neighbouring valleys.
Players
1 village elder, 1 diver, 1 doctor, 1 apothecary, 1 warrior
Equipment
Player character cards
Butchers paper to draw on and whiteboard markers
Teaching Notes
In order to adapt this story for a small group I have given each player a single role. Often you will want the whole class to work together to play a range of characters or for younger children you could assign a single character to a group of students so that they can work together to make decisions based on that characters point of view.
You could also run a game like this by splitting the class into small groups and assigning characters to different students in the group. When you are delivering content you would have the whole class together but then each group would split up to make decisions and complete tasks. This would allow you and the class to see a range of possible decisions and outcomes across the groups.
Until you feel confident I would suggest following the Mantle of the Expert scripts and working with the whole class as one group as you will find that easier to manage.