ABSTRACT
Developing empathy and seeing different perspectives can be hard for pupils. These activities require students to put themselves in the shoes of a historical or religious figure, a villager living next to a proposed dam or “Piggy” in Lord of the Flies. Covered here are Hot Seating (in which one pupil in character sits at the front and is asked questioned by the rest of the class), Mock Trials (in which students play lawyers, witnesses, the jury and the defendant, who might be Chamberlain, Gatsby or Oppenheimer), Question Time (in which a chair takes questions from an audience addressing a panel on climate change, the latest economic crisis or whether we should legalise drugs in sport), Chat Shows (which follow a Jerry Springer/Jeremy Kyle format and are especially popular with students; imagine, for example, a chat show in which the various characters from Hamlet come to take issue with each other in an episode titled “He killed my dad and slept with my mum”), and News Broadcasts (in which students cover a notable event such as the execution of Anne Boleyn or the discovery of DNA).
