USING PERFORMANCE ACTIVITIES AS A TEACHING STRATEGY

What are performance activities?

Performance activities are those teaching strategy in which one or more students are required to act a part. They may be very formal activities ( such as scripted play), very structured activities (such as debating), freeflowing activities ( such as role play), or a mixture of stracture and freedom( such as in simulation game).

When might performance activities be used as teaching strategy

Performance activity can be used as a means of achieving a wide variety of educational outcomes, including acquisition of knowledge, application of knowledge to develop further understanding and skills and attitudinal change.

The advantages of perfomance activities

Enganging students activaly in learning Enabling students to get the feel of situation in ways that might be impossible in real life Develop students communication skills Giving students opportunities to deal with complex problems in concrete ways Give students experience to interaction with other to gain a better understanding of their own values and attitudes

 Encourages students to think critically and creatively Students can resolve conflict in environment Focusing students attention on social and political issues that relate with the real-world problems Helping students to understand the feelings and attitudes of others by experiencing situation rather than just hearing or reading about them Encouraging students to develop skills and selfconfidence.

The disadvantages of performance activities

1. Oversimplify the sitiation being investigated 2. Usually consume large amounts of time 3. Can lead students into thinking that they have all the answers to a given problem 4. May get out of hand if control is given to irresponsible students 5. May be very succesful or a total failure depending on the attitudes or personalities of the participating students 6. Can cause students to become emotionally overinvolved in the situation being investigated

The preparation of performing activities

1. 2. 3. Decide what learning outcomes are to be achieved by tose students participating directly in their activity Decide what learning outcomes are to be achieved by those atudents who are involved inderectly Prepare the resource materials for the direct participant and the other students Select the students who will be directly involved and brief them on their roles Explain to the other students what you expect them to do during the performance Stage the performance Debrief the students (both participants and other) Check that the desired learning outcomes were achieved

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A formal performance activity (Scripted play)

Short scripted plays are an appropiate way to introduce students to the idea of learning through performance activities, such as debate. A procedure for using scripted plays : 1. Preparing 2. Briefing 3. Oversight 4. Debriefing 5. Evaluation

 The rules of script-writing, are : 1. The script should be short 2. The number of lead roles should be restricted to between two and six. 3. Action should be divided into a number of short scenes if the play more than ten minutes 4. The language of the character should be colloquial Australian 5. The plays should focus on Australian content 6. The plays should include humorous situaition to add some interestuse some approximation of the custume of real-life characters depicted in the play 7. You could use use slide and music to mark intervals between the scenes

Some suggestion for using scripted plays

1. Foreign language teaching 2. Involving young children 3. Helping adults to learn 4. An imaginativ approach 5. Correcting common error 6. A shot in the arm 7. Social studies 8. Teaching science 9. Creative thinking and assessment 10. Mathematics problem solving

Role play: spontaneous (unscripted) plays

In role-playing activities, you present to your students a realistic or hypothetical situation and a case of characters. The students than improvise dialect and action to fit their views of the situation and the characters they are playing.

When might role playing be used as a teaching strategy

To motivate the students To finalise unit of study and help students to consolidate their learning To allows students to explore historical or contemporary situation To chalange the students to questions their attitudes To develop students communication skills To teach content based on human relationship To develop citizens skill To help students resolve conflict To give students practice in taking real-life roles and dealing with real-world problems.

The disadvantages of role playing

Role playing can be time-consuming Role playing does not always take the direction one hopes Some students will be reluctant to participate It is often difficult to make role play seem relevant to all students Debriefing is extremely important, but may not be taken seriously by students

Preparation of using role playing

Select or develop the role playing scenario Have the role plays the scenario reviewed Develop students confidence Tell the students what they will be doing and why Select participants and explain their roles Explain what you expect from the audience

Implementation of role playing

When you use role playing, your oversighting, debriefing, and evaluation roles are essentially the same as those decribed for scripted plays. However you may find that with role plays it is helpful to occasionally freeze the action so that the players and the observers have a chance to reflect on what is happening

Some suggestion when using role play

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Foreign language teaching Teaching relationship skills Role play with young children Teaching science Role play as an assessment tool Looking at the real-world Integrating role play with other teaching strategies 8. Computer-based role playing