Unit 5: Creative Ageing - Opportunities and Outlook
3.0 Using Role Play for In-the-moment Experiences
In the previous activity, you saw that language learning can be used to overcome some age boundaries. In this activity, you will consider how language learning can also be used to reinvent yourself, to ‘shed your ego’.
Step A
Do you like role-plays? Have you tried playing in an online role-playing game such as Dungeons and Dragons? Watch this video, "Dungeons and Dragons explained", which tells you about the game and how you play it. (If you would like to watch this video with closed captions, please switch these on in the YouTube player by selecting this icon 
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What do you consider are the advantages of role-playing activities in learning situations? What advantages are there for using this in learning with senior learners in a care setting? Think also back to “in-the-moment-experiences” you encountered in Unit 4. Take notes in your personal learning diary and then compare these with our model answer.
Step B
Now watch the video Italian Passport, in which Rosi Mele, Lingo Flamingo Development Manager, speaks with Eleanor Chapman and Florence Oulds to find out how they used a Dungeons-and-Dragons-style role-play with Eleanor’s Lingo Flamingo learner group. This video has three parts:
- Italian Passport Part 2. In the second part of the video, Eleanor and Florence explain and show the resources she used with her learner group: (
- Italian Passport Part 3. In the third part of the video, they discuss the impact of the role-play on the learners and consider how best to prepare learners for a role-play.
- Watch the three parts of the video and make notes on
- how she explained the game to her learners,
- what effect playing this role-play game had on the learners.
Consider how you could use a Dungeons-and-Dragons-style role-play game with your learner/s. Develop a concrete idea for a short teaching sequence and bring it along to the next online tutorial.