Role Play

By Uche Chidike-Okoro

Free Choice Play

The benefits of Role Play are too numerous and cannot be over emphasised. Let us take a look at a few. It involves experiential learning, facilitates the expression of attitude and feelings, helps make abstract ideas more concrete, involves experiential learning and provides a memorable learning experience. Did you know that Role play fosters children's self-esteem, creativity, communication skills, physical development and ability to solve problems? How, you would ask? It's a good way for children to get into character, act out real-life or imaginary performances, solve the challenges they are faced with during play using their creativity and imagination and having lots of fun while at it.

These and many more interesting conversations children have when Role Play activities are explored. I can’t even begin to explain the fun, excitement and engagement of body and mind involved in Role Play. If children are not Role Playing, what then are they doing? That is definitely food for thought.

What exactly does roleplay mean? Role Play is an activity where children play pretend and act out roles given to them based on a story, imagination or real-life scenarios. It is how children make sense of their world, acting out experiences, ideas or stories. Role Play can be done across all topics or themes and entails using a variety of resources like props, clothes, location and many more

Fred Rogers said ‘’When children engage in pretend play, they are using their imaginations to move beyond the bounds of reality. A stick can be a magic wand, a Sock can be a puppet and a little child can be a Superhero’’. Role Play gives children the opportunity to tell stories in their own words and actions: putting their imagination and creativity to work. Research has shown that Role Play is very crucial in building children’s social competence, including their ability to selfregulate and cope emotionally. It is also very essential for language and vocabulary development. When children Role play, they develop their communication skills as they interact and explore with each other A typical Role Play activity has four main stages: identify the situation, add details, assign roles and act out the scenario. The children MUST be involved in all the stages It should never be planned in isolation of the children. It is also important to note that Role Play activities can be structured or unstructured. That is, the teacher can either facilitate the activity or the children carry it out independently during a class session or

You might ask, why Role Play? In a short but precise answer, Role Play prepares children for real- world situations. They acquire a good number of skills like Negotiation, debate, teamwork, cooperation and persuasion that help them as they continue to grow and develop

Uche Okoro is a veteran educator with expertise in early years education. She is currently heading an international school in Abuja, Nigeria. She is a seasoned early years trainer who has vast knowledge of the intricacies of adopting the British Early Years Framework, which she is well acquainted with and has had several trainings on how the curriculum can be adopted in Nigerian schools. Uche has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from the University of Abuja and a Post Graduate Diploma in Education. She also has an Early Childhood diploma from the Open University, Australia and is a registered Teacher in Nigeria.

She is the Program Coordinator of the Teacher Development Program and the founder of ‘The EYFS Hub’, an educational platform with the objective to change the narrative of the Nigerian Education sector She has training in Special Education, Safeguarding, Early Childhood Development and Administration, Curriculum Instruction, Teacher Leadership, amongst others. Uche has participated in the Nurturing Program to help improve student wellbeing. She is passionate about keeping children safe in education and is very experienced in how this can be effective within an African context.

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