Role-Playing to Develop Confidence
Gifted Students Explore Personalities by Acting
By role-playing specific kinds of characters, gifted students can learn both how to evaluate others and how to receive criticism themselves.
Once the public speaking students have developed their role-play characters, they are ready to read the story and begin the process of assuming an identity other than their own through role-play and improvisation to help them develop the confidence to become good evaluators.
This is a reproducible lesson plan that GATE teachers, and teachers with students prepared for the challenges of role-playing can use as an introduction to learning how to evaluate the work of others.
The Story's Skeletal Outline
You are a passenger aboard a small twin-propeller airplane that is flying unhurriedly from New York City to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia on your way to a conference on Effective Communication Skills. The flight is mainly over water; although, you do see tiny dots of islands from time to time as you cruise along on a sunny summer's day. You have been in the air for several hours now and the long flight is beginning to take its toll on your patience. You are tired and bored, and you want the flight to end.
You should always be careful what you wish for.
Suddenly, you hear a loud explosion and the airplane takes a steep dive toward the water. After thirty seconds of screams and the reports of breaking glasses have filled your ears, the plane levels off maybe a mile or two above sea level according to your sight calculations. The pilot comes over the public address system and reports that you had experienced just a little bit of choppy air and that everything would be back to normal, "right quick."
"No reason to worry," you think to yourself.
Just then, the pilot and the copilot stroll casually down the center aisle each carrying a small toolbox. As they both disappear behind the dark curtain at the end of the fuselage, you relax knowing that the situation is under control.
Three minutes later your newspaper is blown off your serving tray as someone in the rear of the cabin shouts, "Hey, they're parachuting out the back of the plane!"
Several of the passengers race to the rear of the plane as you open the cockpit door. You cannot help but notice that while there was nobody in the command seats, the controls of the airplane were moving by themselves. "Auto-pilot," you say to yourself as you start checking the instruments. Everything seems all right; except for the altimeter that shows that the plane is flying at just below 10,000 feet adjusted for ground level and is dropping about five feet per second! You quickly calculate that at this rate the plane will be bodysurfing in about 30 minutes!
When you race back to report this news to your fellow passengers, you hear that there are only four parachutes left onboard the plane, but at least they are the newer static-line square parachutes which by opening automatically increase the chances for survival, but have to be opened by at least 3,200 feet to work! You recalculate that you now have approximately twenty minutes to make some tough decisions.
Your group will have to decide very quickly who is going to live through the impending disaster!
Exercise Procedures
These activities do not have to be completed in twenty minutes; that piece of information is included to heighten the sense of urgency in this scenario. To help you reach the best possible life-or-death decisions, you should follow these steps:
- Based on your role-playing occupation, you and each of the other "passengers" have one minute or less to plead the case why you should get one of the parachutes. There should be no interruptions during the speeches.
- After each person has spoken, you and each of the other passengers have one minute or less to confront any of the other passengers' spoken perceptions about themselves. Again, there should be no interruptions during the speeches.
- When everyone has spoken, each person whose character was confronted has up to a one-minute rebuttal to defend himself or herself.
- As an optional step to this exercise, following these speeches, you can allow fifteen minutes for small group and one-on-one discussions. During this time, you and your fellow passengers should be in contention for your lives with each other. Can your character form any alliances to guarantee your survival? Can your character make any believable promises that would be to the benefit of the others once you are on the ground?
- When you are ready to continue, everyone takes a sheet of paper and lists four occupations (not names) that should receive a parachute. Tally the votes for all of the occupations and list the top six on a blackboard. The six people playing these occupations should come to the front of the room and take turns rolling two dice. The four people with the top totals of the combined dice will receive the parachutes and will live to tell the story another day!
Resource:
Parker, Douglas A. Basic Public Speaking, 2nd Edition - The Roadmap to Confident Communications! (ISBN: 0-7388-5619-3). Xlibris, Random House Ventures. 2001.
