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The resources below come from a joint project investigated in school into the use of Role play and debate within Geography lessons.  Although time consuming, they do make for fantastic learning opportunities.  All of these ideas could be adjusted for any controversial topic you may cover with your students. Below is also a rough guide on how to run a role play.

GCSE: Thames Barrier replacement GCSE: UK population role play and debate Key Stage 3; Energy Debate A level - 1001 Lands Arctic Debate
Thames Barrier Info Sheet

Power Point

Role play cards

Conflict matrix

Question sheets

Place cards
UK Population Info Sheet

Power Point

Role play cards

Question sheets

Place cards
Power Debate role play cards

Back of cards

Role play place cards

Power Point

Role play questions

 
GCSE: Rainforest destruction in Papua New Guinea GCSE: The impact of TNCs - Fiat in Brazil GCSE: Edge of city greenbelt conflict - Newcastle Great Park Key Stage 3: Environment versus economy - The Camargue
Power Point

Role play cards

Review Sheet
Power Point

Role play cards

Invitation letter

Power Point

Conflict Matrix

Role play cards
Power Point

Role Play cards

How does a role play activity run in practical terms?

The process that we used for the role play activities was as follows:

  1. Choose a topic that allows lots of debate and multiple opinions about that topic (e.g. should Papua New Guinea continue to exploit its forests? Who was responsible for the growth and strength of the British Empire?)
  2. Teacher research into the topic.
  3. Select any number of interest or stakeholder groups (we tended to use between 4 and 6) to be involved in the debate and role play.
  4. Produce a help sheet for the students – this may be a sheet for each stakeholder/interest group – specific to that group, or a generic resource that each group will receive.  We tended to use specific sheets, with information about each group and some questions for the students to think about
  5. Conduct some background lessons into the topic with your students.
  6. In the next lesson, have all of the interest groups on a whiteboard and divide the groups out to the students, who have that lesson to prepare their arguments for the role play or debate.  You can allow the students to group themselves or as we did, put the students into groups before hand. One of the groups we chose was a group who judge, they got called various names depending upon the activity (e.g. Newcastle City Council, the UN, the Government of Papua New guinea etc) but their job was the same.  This group had to establish mark criteria for judging the quality of presentation and the ideas of all of the groups; think of specific tricky questions to ask each group; and at the end of it all come to a judgement – peer assessment and A4L at its best! The judges are therefore a pivotal group and we found that they could “make or break” the lesson.
  7. Set a home work for the students to find props to represent their group (shirt and tie, judges wig and gavel etc), a tree costume (to represent Greenpeace!).
  8. Conduct the role play – we found that a conference setting or horse shoe table arrangement worked best and we also put name tags onto each group’s desk.  We also did not interfere too much; we sat with the judges and mildly pointed them in the right direction.  It was the judges who really took control, directing questions, allowing the presentation of each group’s ideas, allowing counterarguments, judging the value of each response, and recording interesting points made.
  9. Allow the judges to sum up – including the main points made during the discussion, who made the strongest argument and why, which interesting questions appeared etc. 
  10. Finally, the teacher would then step in to debrief the whole process.