Gifted students can assume another identity in learning both how to evaluate others and how to receive constructive criticism.
As they can be overly critical of themselves at times, in many cases gifted students will have an emotional as well as intellectual response to receiving criticism from others. It can also be difficult for gifted students to have the trust needed to offer critiques of other at times. To help address these issues, having the students assume an identity other than their own through role-play and improvisation can help them develop the confidence to become good evaluators. Being able to critique others and receive criticism is an important skill for success in many arenas, such as process writing, theater, or public speaking.
This is a reproducible lesson plan that GATE teachers, and teachers with students prepared for the challenges of role-playing can use as an introduction to learning how to evaluate the work of others.
Terror at 10,000 Feet!
A good way to examine how you and your peers respond to speech evaluations is to conduct a straightforward exercise in which everyone has the opportunity to promote himself or herself and to speak critically about others. Normally you would not want to engage in an exercise like this because you have been taught that if you don't have anything nice to say about somebody, you should keep it to yourself.
To help you adjust to your new role as an evaluator in as safe an environment as possible, first you will have to understand how to role-play. In this exercise, you will practice how to develop a character, how to listen to "unfair and unfounded comments," how to respond appropriately to these critiques, and how to offer critical comments back to your peers.
In this exercise, you and each of your peers should choose one of the following occupations to role-play. You can develop other occupations to add to this list, but you can use this file for starters:
- A banker
- A medical doctor
- A lawyer
- A veterinarian
- A sailor
- A mechanic
- A professional wrestler
- A writer
- A teacher
- A scientist
- A cook
- A soldier
- A young child
- An airline attendant
- An armed security officer
- A wealthy businessperson
- A meteorologist
- A college student
Once you have chosen your occupation, take a few minutes to develop your character. Picture in your mind what your character looks like and sounds like. Once you have this image in your mind, pretend that you are that person and try to answer some of these questions:
- What is your name?
- Where do you live?
- How old are you?
- Do you have any relatives?
- How often do you exercise?
- How sympathetic are you?
- How do you react in a crisis situation?
- How honest are you?
- How naive are you?
- How wealthy are you?
Once you have prepared your characters, you are ready to begin with the story.
Resource:
Parker, Douglas A. Basic Public Speaking, 2nd Edition - The Roadmap to Confident Communications! (ISBN: 0-7388-5619-3). 2001. Xlibris, Random House Ventures.
