Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Pantomime and role play in the classroom


As promised I am back with some of my notes from the German teacher congress in Athens.
While there I attended a coupble of very interesting workshops by Mr Wickert, who is specializing in teacher education abroad.
What made it really interesting was the fact that we used pantimime and gestures, expressing feelings and situations and this can be done with all levels and all kinds of dilalogues.

Let me describe some of the activities, which can be used as warm ups or even in the end of the lesson...

Activity 1:
Students in circle. A very simple dialogue using the words "yes" and "no" using different expressions. One student chooses somebody else from the circle telling him the word "yes" showing a "feeling" for examply angry. The othe student answers no reacting to his/her expression.
This can be done with different sentences like "I like you" or " nice weather today"

Activity 2:
Students still in circle. A little longer dialogue:

A: Hast du B: Was
A: Du hast B: Wieso denn
A: Ich habe B: Ja
A: Habe ich B: Warum

First read out the dialogue in turns. Then in pairs decide for the different expressions which will be used. Students act out the dialogue and the others try to guess the situation.

Activity 3:
Live picture. Teacher gives students a word, i.g. Schoolyard, or Market. Students mime what's happening at the place. Teacher goes aroung and touches students who in turn have to say what they are doing/thinking. This can also be done with other students guessing what the person is thinking

Activity 4:
Live statue. Divide students into pairs and give each pair a word that has to do with feelings or a situation, i.g. happy, drunk, depressed etc. Student 1 "forms" the statue "Student 2" and the others try to guess the word.

This is just an example of what I experienced during the workshops. Mr Wickert has promised to organize a seminar at Goethe Intitut Athens in the next months, so if you're nearby, don't miss it!!

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