Various types of role-playing games are currently used in domestic education. For example, they are addressed when teaching foreign languages.
There are several distinctive features of role-playing games, which indicate its relevance in various fields:
- spoken language contributes to the disclosure of the communicative abilities of participants, is a great way to motivate the educational process;
- the game allows you to maintain interest in the material used in it, to intensify activities during the entire lesson;
- non-traditional activity allows the teacher to keep the attention of students.
"Theater" at home
From early childhood, the child is involved in a role-playing game. The family in which he grows is characterized by the distribution of roles, the baby has certain responsibilities and rights. With the help of the game, the child is introduced to the outside world. Children's role-playing games contribute to the acquisition of new knowledge and skills. Kids, like spectators in a theater, watch a performance, absorb the events that systematically occur around them. In a game with peers, they demonstrate acting skills, develop, grow, improve their communication skills.
Sample scenario of the game "Zoo"
You will need figures of different animals, material for making aviaries (cardboard boxes), natural material to create the effect of the park, as well as tickets.
Children are divided into groups, in each they choose a cashier and director of the zoo. The guys build a zoo, organize excursions in it. First, the group selects the animal to care for. At this time, the director comes up with the location of the enclosures, distributes building materials, invites workers. He also makes a map, outlines excursion routes.
The guide tells visitors about the animal, its lifestyle, and feeding conditions.
The peculiarity of this role-playing game is that some of the children act as workers, and the rest come to the zoo on an excursion, buy tickets from the cashier.
The game is suitable for extracurricular activities, promotes the acquaintance of children with the world of professions.
Educational games
These types of role-playing games have long been known. Teachers paid attention to the effectiveness of their use in the educational process. The child has the opportunity to fully demonstrate to surrounding people creative talents and abilities.
As you grow older, interest in the game in children does not disappear. Teachers of foreign languages take this fact into account, they actively use role-playing in their work. The teacher develops the script independently or uses ready-made methodological developments. Learning a foreign language is not limited to simply memorizing phrases and individual words. Children should get acquainted with another culture, compare it with domestic traditions.
The role-playing game “Family”, used in teaching children English (German, French or any other) language, speeds up the process of memorizing words, allows children to practice them in life situations created in the lesson.
The game can be considered a unique phenomenon of human culture, its peak and source.
Functions
Various types of role-playing games contribute to creating a welcoming atmosphere in the lesson (in extracurricular activities). They unite schoolchildren, contribute to the emergence of new communicative and emotional relationships between them.
The guys at school are sitting at their desks inactive, so during the games there is physical and emotional unloading.
Currently, various types of role-playing games are used. They are small situations, the construction of which is similar to the scheme of a dramatic work. They have storylines, a conflict arises, there is a denouement.
What else characterizes the role-playing game? The script is a real life situation. Despite the fact that the game has conditions, it contains an element of surprise.
If the teacher asks an unusual question, the child begins to reason, look for a decent answer to it. That is why speech during the game is spontaneous, mistakes are made in the construction of phrases.
Speech communication involves not only speech itself, but also facial expressions, gestures. Daniil Borisovich Elkonin considered roles in role plays in his writings. He believed that they are connected with the conditions of society, depend on the level of development of productive forces.
Organization of role-playing is the task of the teacher. The final result directly depends on the level of his professionalism, interest in simulated situations.
Distinctive features
Before proposing a specific situation, a role play plan is drawn up. It positively affects the establishment of contact between classmates and the teacher. During it, the conditions of speech equality are created, the classical barrier between children and their mentor is destroyed.
Often costumes for role-playing games are created by their direct participants. This helps the child overcome shyness and increase his own self-esteem. The guys not only master certain knowledge, they learn to talk, to argue their point of view.
Some teachers and educators use costumes for role-playing games to make classes as close as possible to reality.
Emerging issues
As part of a regular training session, schoolchildren have difficulties with the wording of the answer to the question posed by the teacher. Role play is built on interpersonal relationships. It performs an incentive and motivational function.
It refers to teaching methods, since it substantially allows the teacher to model different situations for students. Such games are exercises for mastering the skills of dialogue in various situations. In particular, in foreign language lessons, thanks to the involvement of schoolchildren in role-playing games, the teacher develops and improves interpersonal communication skills in his pupils.
A similar technique allows you to take into account the age characteristics of students, their interests. Basically, in the educational process, controlled as well as scenario role play is used.
Features of controlled form
It involves the participants receiving a general description of their roles, which allows them to prepare an individual task for themselves. The problematic nature of this form of work is that role behavior is understandable only to the performer himself. Other participants in the process can only guess which line of behavior the partner will choose, and only after that make a decision about their own game tactics.
The program of the game is developed by the teacher. He informs schoolchildren of all problematic situations in which they will be able to take an active part. These situations are thoroughly considered in the framework of the educational (extracurricular) lesson. If necessary, the teacher advises the children on the material used in the role play.
Free form
This version of the game contributes to the formation of group and individual work skills in children. Pupils independently choose the theme of the game, develop a scenario, select specific material, conduct a search for the necessary information recommended by the teacher. Free role-playing games are suitable for extracurricular activities. For example, the teacher chooses this form when organizing design and research work.
Scenario games
They are most often used when working with literary texts. In the process of preparing for them, the guys under the guidance of a teacher create a program, come up with a script. If the game activity is carried out within the framework of a foreign language, the linguistic content for each role is selected, and the behavior of the plot characters is also stipulated.
The benefits of gaming
Thanks to the role play in kindergartens and schools, teachers can form and maintain the cognitive interest of their pupils in a certain material. With the help of it, students are in a situation that involves the development of communication skills. Shy, unsure of their abilities and knowledge, children overcome such complexes, develop their creative abilities.
Examples
The following are options for role-playing games, the use of which is permissible when learning a foreign language in a comprehensive school.
The teacher divides the class into pairs. Each group receives cards with certain pictures. According to the rules of the game, the demonstration of cards to the second player is not allowed. When working in pairs, students ask each other questions to understand which pictures they have in common and which ones are different.
In the game “Gemini”, the skills of building a monologue, the provision of comparisons, and evidence are activated. Players receive colorful cards that they cannot show to the rest of the participants. As part of the monologue, students describe the contents of the postcard, trying to find the owner of a similar image. The participant who wins the fastest without errors to find the “twins” wins.
The game "Collect the reaction" is used as part of the teaching of chemistry in a comprehensive school. Its essence is to summarize the basic terms relating to the course of interaction between reagents. Each player receives a specific role:
- starting material;
- reaction product;
- catalyst (inhibitor).
The teacher describes a specific process, and participants should model and imagine its course, taking into account the speed of interaction and other factors.
In the framework of teaching literature, a mandatory element of increasing the cognitive interest of schoolchildren in this academic discipline is precisely role play. For example, when reading an excerpt from a work of art, the children are first divided in roles, reading the text, then young actors beat the words of their characters. This option helps the teacher to identify bright and gifted children, to create optimal conditions for their self-development.
As part of extracurricular activities, parents of schoolchildren can also be involved in role-playing games. For example, when organizing a joint holiday, the teacher invites the participants to voice the fairy tale "Turnip". Children and parents are happy to be involved in the creative process, depict various characters of this work. In the process of such a joint theatrical activity between generations, mutual understanding is formed, which helps to avoid many conflict situations.
Conclusion
Currently, role-playing games are actively used not only in the framework of the educational and educational process in kindergartens and schools, but also in the organization of corporate holidays in organizations. Distinctive features of role-playing games for adults are the use of mostly comic scenarios, the use of theme costumes. The office staff is enthusiastically involved in the creative process, portraying certain characters. The advantage of role-playing games for adults can be called the process of team building, the identification of non-standard thinking of individual workers within the game.