Reflection 7 - The art of language use: The high responsibility role play

In this reflection I will talk about how teachers should work in growing consciousness in the students of the importance of L2 proficiency and the importance of high order thinking skills; this taking into account what we saw in class about Bloom’s Taxonomy, stages of second language acquisition, and building background.  It’s very important for our students to simultaneously follow a process to advance in the stages of L2 acquisition and in their high order skills, something that can be achieved through observation of our students and correct application of differentiated instruction; however, this can be accomplished more easily and efficiently if students’ are conscious of its relevancy in today’s world.

The use of tools like the matrix that combines Bloom’s Taxonomy and the stages of L2 acquisition could help a teacher, after observing students, to plan according to the stage in which each student is and be able to practice the different high order skills, leading students to deeper thinking. To achieve the foregoing, teachers’ should be conscious of the importance of language in the application of high order thinking skills, and then transfer through different means this consciousness to the students; below I suggest a way to do it. Any cognition goal will be better achieved when students are engaged and when they see the importance of what they are learning; in this case deeper thinking application, and how language can help them to, not only think deeply and choose the right sources to do it, but be able to express and share their thinking.  

The project is for the social studies subject, 7^th grade; however, it can be applied, with little changes, to other grades and subjects. It is called the high responsibility role play; it has various activities and uses the different language skills. First, the teacher creates groups of three students based on language stage, interests, and high order thinking skills; each group will be given a topic of interest in which they will have different high responsibility roles connected to their topic.

The idea of the project is that the students learn through that role play about the importance of language when using different thinking levels. In today’s world there are many high responsibility positions that require these abilities to achieve the corresponding tasks, these persons need to know their field and apply what they know, analyze and evaluate, create solutions to problems that arise, among others. Some examples are: sports team manager (team captain, technical assistant), orchestra director (concertmaster), film director (director of photography), among others.

After being given a topic they will have to assign the roles within the group and, through different activities guided by the teacher, face the challenges of their assigned positions. The final product will be a short play presented to the rest of the class where they will apply all what they learned of their characters using the appropriate language and will show the use different high order thinking skills. Other activities during the project can be: listening to speeches, drawing conceptual maps of what they need to know about their topic, reading news releases that have to do with their characters, among others. This small project will also include solving coexistence problems, among others social studies topics.