So, Which Frozen Character are You?

Many of us have taken personality quizzes on Facebook or other sites. Buzzfeed, in particular, holds many popular ones. In this clip, Ellen takes a quiz on which queen of comedy she would be:

Ellen asks an interesting question in the clip. Basically, she wants to know why finding out what kind of pizza slice we might be helps us in the world. Likely, knowing that I'm a particular type of pizza won't spring to mind when I'm facing a difficult problem. Knowing that won't help me make an important decision, or explain a particular reaction (other than when it comes from pizza). Pizza slice aside, how can finding our role in a popular television series, film, book series, or play benefit us at all?

In Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins discusses the need for role play. In discussing the Sims, a favorite of my daughter's, he wrote, "nothing is ever just a game. Games have consequences. Games also give us an opportunity to break out of the roles and actions that we might be forced into in real life" (231). I don't want to go down the trail of games in general, mainly because I already have before. In this case, I want to specifically look at the benefits of role play.

A recent Mind Shift article discussed the use of role play in a college course. And, of course, the article mentions a book to add to my wish list. In the article, the students reflect on a long-term use of role play to cover content. Students brought up engaging aspects of this kind of learning experience that included engaging the competitive spirit in some, engaging curiosity to learn how to play the appointed role in others, and more lively discussion.

Structuring a course-wide role play can be difficult to design, and may not be practical for some high school courses. In some high schools, student populations change, which makes a sustained role play hard for students with schedule changes and new students. Here are some smaller possibilities:

• scenarios or simulations - these can be on a small scale as a beginning of class activity or a review towards the end. Here is one I wrote to review SCARF.This is more indirect role play, but people can read out the parts (that's what we did).
• short skits to explore an idea - when done using a protocol (here is the protocol we used for the observers during SCARF role play where teams could tag in and tag out when it was their turn).
• creating personality quizzes to help students with choices - one of our VLA teachers created a great personality quiz to help students see which book may be more to their liking, but this possibility can go beyond the book into types of writing, projects, etc. 
• creating or using personality quizzes to begin discussions of texts or other content - if we are more like Elsa in Frozen, for example, what does that say about her? about us? do we even agree?
• finding online simulation games where students can role play in a content-oriented situation, explore possibilities, discover consequences, and reflect 

I'd love to hear how other people use this strategy for engagement!