THE INDISPENSIBILITY OF ROLE PLAY FOR THE CLASSROOM TEACHER: OVOM GIRLS HIGH SCHOOL ABA EXPERIMENT AS PARADIGM

Abstract

The need for the classroom teacher to enliven his teaching methods with the use of participants based teaching methods and to properly involve the student as a participant in the teaching/ learning process rather than an observer gave rise to this paper which explores the characteristics and nature of role play for use by the teacher for his students. It was designed to help teachers to understand the rudiments, techniques, the use and integration of role play as an informal teaching method to spice up their teaching. Furthermore, it was to expose the advantages, importance and methods of using role- play in the classroom. This paper is predicated on the process-concept structural approach to drama as advocated by Siks, which simply implies following the conceptual framework of drama to design "activities involving students in the dramatic process". The research which is participant action oriented was carried out in Ovom Girls High School, Aba with some of her teachers. The paper concludes that role play which is multidimensional and goal oriented is a veritable tool for a creative teacher to enliven his classroom lessons and recommends that more teachers should be exposed to the techniques of role play and encouraged to embrace this technique to spice their teaching methods. Keywords: Role Play, Teaching, Group Dynamics.