Role Playing and Jigsaw:
Bringing Life Back to the Social Studies Classroom
Dates and dead people. These are the two traits that are most commonly attributed to a high school history class. Two of my goals in becoming a high school social studies teacher are to increase the interest and participation levels in social studies courses. Teachers have the ability to make a social studies classroom come alive, which is what I hope to do. If a teacher wants to make this happen, he/she needs to be intentional about the instructional models used in the classroom. These models not only have the ability to bring life to a previously stale classroom, but more importantly, they address and support the different learning styles of students. It will be my job as a teacher to make sure that the students in my classroom understand the content I am sharing with them. Using different instructional strategies will allow for students with different learning styles to better understand the content. As a social studies teacher, I fully intend on using the cooperative learning models of Role Playing and Jigsaw because they encourage students to interact both with one another and the content while also supporting academic achievement for all students.
Role Playing
Role Playing is a method that transforms the dead people of a boring history textbook into living, breathing, people—students. Dell’Olio and Donk (2007, p. 282) explain the purpose of Role Playing as “a model of teaching that facilitates social problem solving” that can also be used academically in the social studies. Role Playing uses multiple opportunities for students to act out a scenario and discussions to decide on the best way for people to handle a situation (Dell’Olio & Donk, 2007). These scenarios can be made up by the teacher or based upon current or historical events. An opportunity that allows everyone to get involved, Role Playing allows for a few student actors and the rest of the class to be an active audience who share their comments in between takes. Students who are too nervous to be actors in the front of the class still have important roles as observers in the audience.
The steps to Role Playing are rather simple, but all of them are vital for the success of the lesson. First, the teacher must warm up the class using verbal and physical exercises so the students will be ready to participate (Dell’Olio & Donk, 2007). Student volunteers are then chosen to be the first set of actors; specifically, students “who will most likely get the role play session off to a good start” (Dell’Olio & Donk, 2007, p. 297). The next step is the teacher’s most important job: to review the purpose for the Role Playing and asks students to describe the context and scenery, in addition to preparing the audience members, who may undervalue their role because they are not in the front of the room (Dell’Olio & Donk, 2007). The actors then take charge and begin Role Playing the situation for the first time, while the audience watches attentively (Dell’Olio & Donk, 2007). After the first role play, students discuss and evaluate what they just saw; the teacher does not need to say a lot during this time, just prompt the students as the dialogue dwindles (Dell’Olio & Donk, 2007). The second scene can be acted out with the same set of actors or with new volunteers; it begins after the first discussion is finished, but is altered from the first scene in some way (Dell’Olio & Donk, 2007). The second scene is followed by another evaluative discussion; after which, new volunteers are selected for another reenactment of the again-slightly-altered scene (Dell’Olio & Donk, 2007). These two steps can be repeated as many times as the teacher believes to be necessary. The final discussion compares and contrasts the scenes and comes to a conclusion about them all, such as choosing the best solution, how each person is impacted by the solution, or which is most realistic from history (Dell’Olio & Donk, 2007). Even though high school class periods are often rushed at the end, this final discussion is important because it connects the entire lesson and allows students to come to some sort of conclusion about what they just participated in.
The social studies classroom allows for many different opportunities to take advantage of Role Playing. First, in terms of how Dell’Olio and Donk (2007) described its use for social problem solving. Many social studies classes discuss controversial issues such as abortion, immigration, and war. The Role Playing model allows for students to present different approaches to these topics in a neutral manner because students are acting on behalf of characters and cannot be attacked for their own beliefs (Dell’Olio & Donk, 2007). Second, many history classes read historical novels. Dell’Olio and Donk (2007, p. 298) suggest that students act out “scenes that do not exist in the actual work.” For example, conversations that may take place between two characters that an author does not write or how a situation in the book may turn out differently based on alternative decision making (Dell’Olio & Donk, 2007). Role Playing in this situation encourages students to think critically about the book and forces them to analyze literature outside of the English classroom.
One wonderful benefit to Role Playing is that it allows the teacher to step back from the front of the class and for the students to have more of a lead in the lesson. Teachers are facilitators during role playing. The teacher still needs to spend time setting up the scenario and preparing prompting questions for the students to begin discussions from; however, the students gain ownership over their learning by being the actors and carrying on the discussion. Additionally, according to Alvarez (2008, p. 188), who conducted a study on using Role Playing simulations in the classroom, students found the most difficult of the three Role Playing exercises (averaging a 3.06 out of 5) the role play that brought the most enjoyment “(3.14 versus 2.96 and 2.92)” and the most amount of learning (3.55 versus 3.52 and 3.51).” Alvarez (2008) further tested the success of these simulation activities with an end of the year survey which found that the top ranked Role Playing activity was also the class’ third overall favorite activity; two field trips were rated in the first and second positions. This means that not only are students learning necessary information from these activities, but that they truly are enjoying the class more than if they were spending the period doing an alternative activity. Therefore, opportunities to use Role Playing need to be embraced by teachers and not avoided, why not encourage enjoyable learning? Furthermore, Role Playing “engage[s] the multiple intelligences” and “clearly challenge[s] the interpersonal skills of all students and their ability to work with each other” (Alvarez, 2008, p. 187). Students are not only learning about human interaction in these social studies classrooms, they are becoming successful at human interactions themselves; this is a skill that schools cannot afford to skip over.
While Role Playing does have its downsides, the positives outweigh these negative aspects. One complaint of Alvarez (2008) about the instruction model is that it is time-consuming. This is probably a major complaint about this activity by many teachers because Role Playing does normally consume an entire class period. However, the impact that it has on students academically, socially, and interpersonally make it worth the time because of everything that students gain from this one activity. From my experience with working with high school students on a regular basis, I can predict that a potential hazard may be that the same students swill be the actors during the acting portions of Role Playing. While students may enjoy watching their funnier peers participate as the actors, a teacher needs to be able to push for all students to have the opportunity to participate as actors during Role Playing throughout the year. Initially, shy students may want to avoid this at all costs; on the other hand, they may enjoy being given a very small part that just allows them to participate up front more than anything else. While it is great to get everyone involved as an actor, Role Playing is set up for the non-actors to have a valuable impact on the activity through the group discussions. Teacher s can facilitate to make sure that these students especially are given a voice during these times. While Role Playing is not the perfect activity, it is evident that teachers have the ability to work around these possible drawbacks that are not strong enough reasons to dismiss this cooperative learning instruction model.
Jigsaw
The Jigsaw model of instruction follows suit with the Role Playing model in that student learning is interdependent. Students need the participation of one another in order to gain the most information from either model. The Jigsaw model of instruction is described by Dell’Olio and Donk (2007, p. 246) as “a type of cooperative learning experience that promotes both academic and social goals for students.” These very words can be used to describe Role Playing; however, Jigsaw revolves around small group work instead of one big group. Jigsaw can be used in the high school social studies classroom as well as in many other disciplines and many other grade levels, making this a very flexible instruction model. The way that the Jigsaw works is “each member of a Jigsaw group has one portion of the total content to be learned, and the members will each teach their portion to all of the group members” (Dell’Olio & Donk, 2007, p. 246). Each expert group learns about a different topic, for example, the different regions of the United States of America, and become experts on their area. After the first group discussion with this original group, students then break up into groups with students who were assigned different regions and teach one another what they have learned (Dell’Olio & Donk, 2007). How the information is displayed or evaluated is up to the teacher each time a Jigsaw is performed (Dell’Olio & Donk, 2007). Students may post blogs, make slideshows, use posters, small dramas – the possibilities are nearly endless! The students can do a final presentation in front of the class with their expert group and the class can have any final discussions to help make sense of the new information, tying it all together (Dell’Olio & Donk, 2007). Finally, the teacher can use an individual assessment to check for understanding from each student. The steps in a Jigsaw are very simple and allow room for creativity and adaptations, making it an instruction model that can fit into any social studies classroom from history to economics to psychology.
Aside from flexibility and simplicity, the Jigsaw model has many benefits. Part of the positives of the Jigsaw comes from the reason it was created. As a part of the multicultural movement, “the original intent of Jigsaw learning was to provide children from diverse backgrounds the opportunity to work effectively and interdependently with one another” (Dell’Olio & Donk, 2007, p. 257). Teachers can be very intentional about placing students in groups with students they do not often work with or talk to, creating groups that are both racially and academically diverse (Dell’Olio & Donk, 2007). With the work divided among everyone, students have the opportunity to see that their peers can do work equally well. This is another benefit of the Jigsaw model as opposed to other group assignments. Jigsaw is designed for everyone to have to contribute to the work, “no one student can dominate the group” (Dell’Olio & Donk, 2007, p. 246). Students are each assigned a portion of their topic to become experts on and teach to the rest of their group; the group is depending on that student for the group success. Johnson and Johnson (as cited in Dell’Olio & Donk, 2007, p. 246) organized five essential components for cooperative learning; Jigsaw is an academic model that actually encourages all five components: positive interdependence, face-to-face interaction, individual accountability, social skills development, and group processing opportunities. This instruction model is beneficial for the social studies classroom because students gain valuable life-skills that do not form from reading a textbook and answering questions. Sadler and Klosterman (2009) studied the use of Jigsaw in a high school science classroom using the topic of global warming. The researchers used video to observe the groups’ interactions with one another and observed “that most students were actively engaged in analyzing the different perspectives and contributing to small-group discussions” (Sadler & Klosterman, 2009, p. 12). Many teachers know from their own previous experience as students that group projects have the tendency to be dominated by only a couple of students from the group. Research on the Jigsaw method shows that the majority of students actively participate in this small group setting, making it a model worthy of implementation. In addition, Sadler and Klosterman (2009, p. 12) claim “that the activity seemed to help students keep an open mind throughout the unit because they did not feel as though we were forcing them to adopt a predetermined position.” High school students are at a point in life when they want to make decisions for themselves. Jigsaw presents the facts but allows the students to decide on a position for themselves. The Jigsaw model is a method that encourages student interaction, improves cooperative learning skills, and increases student learning.
Just like Role Playing, Jigsaw has its negative impacts. Like many cooperative learning models, Jigsaw requires a lot of time. Sadler and Klosterman (2009, p. 12) explain that “students had to rush a bit but completed the task in a 55-min class period.” It may even be better to provide one and one half or two class periods for the assignment; that way students will be guaranteed enough time for each group session and to debrief as a class at the end. While Jigsaw teaches students to work with people they would not normally choose to work with, there is still the potential for higher-achieving students to become frustrated or dissatisfied with the work done by other students in their expert group. Dell’Olio and Donk (2007) suggest that teachers leave expert groups together for at least a couple of Jigsaws, which can lead to built up frustrations because the higher-achieving students are continuously disappointed in the work of their peers. However, this in itself is a learning opportunity and the teacher can take advantage of this opportunity to discuss more than just racial differences. In addition, teachers can assess students separately, instead of giving one group grade. This solution will relieve a lot of the stress on students which will allow them to interact more positively with their peers. Time is a drawback of cooperative learning that cannot be remedied, but the benefits of the time spent outweigh that time spent on one activity and the potential for students to become dissatisfied with their groups can be dealt with by the way the teacher handles the situation; thus, the negatives about Jigsaw are not strong enough to not use this activity in a class.
Beneficial teaching for all
Role Playing and Jigsaw are intentional cooperative learning strategies that coincide with the multicultural movement. Diversity and multicultural education are two very important components of education in the twenty-first century. I am not even a certified teacher yet and I myself have already taken two diversity courses in preparation to become a teacher. Lisa Delpit is an author who focuses on equal education for every student, regardless of skin-tone or background. In her book Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom, Delpit (2006, p. 140) cites researcher B. Holliday who found “that motivation in African-American children from low socioeconomic groups is more influenced by the need for affiliation than for achievement.” Teachers who use cooperative learning are surrounding students with their peers, encouraging African-American students to affiliate with their peers through academics. If African-American students are not motivated on their own, working with a group may help them to become more motivated. Researcher Harry Morgan did a study in 1990 that is consistent with the finding s of Holliday (as cited in Delpit, 2006). Morgan found “that a classroom that allows for greater movement and interaction will better facilitate the learning and social styles of African-American boys, while one that disallows such activity will unduly penalize them” (as cited in Delpit, 2006, p. 169). Both Role Playing and Jigsaw encourage student interaction and involve getting up and moving around the classroom, criteria needed to improve academic achievement among African-American students, especially boys. The multicultural movement seeks to remove the Eurocentric focus of the United States’ education system. The content used during Role Playing and Jigsaw do not need to be directly about diversity or multiculturalism in order for them to be sensitive to this movement, their formats are what make them positive contributors to a multicultural education. Teachers who have any level of diversity in their classrooms need to be aware of how their students learn best. For example, if I have a student who I know needs to be able to talk about content with his/her peers, I will do what I can to make that a possibility for him/her. When there is a student who needs to be able to get up and move around during class, I will be inclined to ask him/her to be a volunteer during a Role Playing lesson, just so he/she can get up from the desk. Teachers want students to succeed, that is why they are teachers; therefore, they need to be aware of learning strategies that can help to make their students more successful.
In conclusion, though I am not yet a teacher, I have a solid grasp on what learning strategies have the ability to have positive influences on a high school social studies classroom in the twenty-first century. Students gain motivation and show more engagement with material when they actively interact with the content. These two components are influential in promoting academic success. Cooperative learning strategies like Role Playing and Jigsaw give students the opportunity to interact with one another and gain social skills for life outside of high school and in the workforce. When students face difficult content matter they embrace it as a group and are given the opportunity to work through the coursework together. Additionally, cooperative learning is a positive response to the multicultural movement because it is responsive to the needs of American students with different learning needs. Role Playing and Jigsaw may be only two cooperative learning strategies out of many; however, they show evidence of success and are responsive to quality student learning.
Works Cited
Alvarez, Patricia (2008). Students play the notables: Testing a simulation exercise. History Teacher, 41(2), 179-97.
Dell’Olio, J. M., & Donk, T. (2007). Models of teaching: Connecting student learning with standards. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Delpit, Lisa. (2006). Other people’s children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New York, NY: The New Press.
Sadler, T. D., & Klosterman, M. L. (2009). Exploring the sociopolitical dimensions of global warming. Science Activities: Classroom Projects and Curriculum Ideas, 42(4), 9-13.
