Getting in Role: Reading and Learning from Various Points of View

When I want to get my children to do something I ask them to pretend they are some kind of animal, or do a silly move, or sing a song, or be the parent. Each time they become so engulfed in the playing that they don't mind doing what I ask. My favorite is when they pretend to be the parent. Through their acting I can see what they truly understand and have learned from my husband and I. They are comprehending more that we know and it is through acting it out that I can see this the most. My children are only 2 and 4 years old. I didn't read a book to learn how to do this, but I simply thought I was being a creative parent. None the less, according to Wilhelm, enactments are simply this: "imagining to learn". The same thing that I do with my own children can be done in the classroom to get kids involved in reading a text. It is so engaging that they don't even realize they are learning. In his book, Wilhelm quotes a fellow colleague who says, "It was as if the drama helped enact a rite of passage and transformation in how they read and how they were affected by their reading." (p.58). With enactments, students begin to see how they are apart of the story. In the article we read on transactional literature, the author states that reading does not occur until the reader reads it. It is only words and it becomes a story with meaning after the interaction with the reader. Enactments help to do this; bring the story to life to create meaning.

This chapter outlines specific strategies to be used in the classroom. It is a book that you would refer to daily throughout your teaching career. Each strategy has many different parts and forces students to use higher level thinking skills to understand the text. They are not simply recalling facts at a knowledge level, but tapping into prior knowledge to build comprehension. Through the strategies they: enter a role, respond to situations through a perspective, enliven the story and facts, infer, elaborate, and reflect (Wilhelm, p.61). By doing this through acting students get deeper then they would alone on a piece of paper.

I love how these activities make learning more social than the average classroom. It brings the real world into class and encourages collaboration. Many of the enactments ask students to play the role of someone in real life (a writer, photographer, reporter, police officer, etc.) By doing this, students are expected to research and learn what these people do actually know. The role playing piece gives a whole new sense of motivation to research and learning.