The interview of Bill Bigelow that we read for class today mentioned doing a lot of role-playing in the classroom. I definitely think it can be an effective teaching method for helping students identify more easily with the topic they are studying. I know when I was in middle school I had a literature teacher who assigned groups to act out on video a particular scene from the Odyssey, which each group presented to the class. By acting out the story, we were able to understand it better. I was wondering if anyone had any good examples of a role-play activity you thought was particularly helpful in a upper-grade classroom.

I remember in many 10th or 11th grade english we role-played out a few scenes of shakesphere. I felt that it was helpful in certain ways, but at the same time my main focus was learning the difficult lines and being embarassed about acting in front of peers. These distractions i think took away from the educational experience i was suppose to be getting.