Role on the Wall: Directions and Digital Template

With Austin ISD incorporating more blended learning models, the CLI team is looking for ways to adapt components of certain Creative Teaching strategies and arts-based activities into digital formats. This post offers templates (in English and Spanish) for Role on the Wall that can be customized for your needs. Role on the Wall is a drama-based activity that is more commonly done using a whiteboard/chalkboard or giant piece of paper stuck to the wall, hence “on the wall.”

Role on the Wall works well across age groups, and most obviously connects with Language Arts and Social Studies curriculum, but also offers possibilities for inventive applications in STEM. Read on for directions and suggestions.

This post and activity directions are adapted from the University of Texas at Austin’s Drama for Schools. Visit their website to read more about Role on the Wall and watch a video of a teacher facilitating this strategy. Role on the Wall was created by scholars Jonothan Neelands and Tony Goode.

In Role on the Wall, students are invited to:

“infer meaning about a character [or figure] and to visually map the relationship between characteristics (emotions) and actions (behaviors) onto a simple outline of a human figure. By inviting students to analyze context clues, the group collectively explores and constructs a more complex understanding of the character’s motivation” (UT Drama for Schools, linked above).

Our instructions focus on the explicit and/or implicit external and internal influences and messages a character or figure receives, is impacted by, and/or communicates. Students can then reflect on the factors motivating the actions/behaviors of certain characters or figures.

Basic Instructions

1. Give students the digital template of your choice below (or have students draw on paper with writing utensil, or teacher draw on whiteboard/chalkboard for whole-class activity).
2. Assign or have students choose a character or historical person (or, for STEM, perhaps anthropomorphized concept or setting) from their learning that day, week, or lesson unit.
   • For a historical person, the teacher may want to choose a particular moment (year, month, era) of a person’s life, and have students reflect on the person at that moment in time.
3. Have students think about what the character or person went through. What external messages or influences did they receive? “Invite the group to name out words, phrases, or messages that this specific person [or character] might receive” or did receive. Have students type each answer in a Post-It note, and place the Post-It notes on the outside of the figure.
   • Prompts can be inspired by/focus on different areas of the body. UT Drama for Schools suggests:
     • Hands: What does the character want to do?
     • Feet: Where does the character want to go?
     • Heart: How is the character feeling?
     • Head: What is the character thinking?
   • As students think of answers, ask them to connect those answers to “where” on the figure that message “comes from.” Encourage multiple answers!
4. What internal messages or influences did the character/figure communicate? Why? Place Post-It notes containing those messages, influences, and/or feelings on relevant parts of the figure.
   • Again, you might use different areas of the body to help spark answers. Ideas from Facing History’s Character Map, linked below:
     • Mouth: What is this person [or character] saying?
     • Stomach: What is this person [or character] worried about?
     • Heart: What does this person [or character] care about?
5. Where possible, use the pen tool to connect the external and internal Post-It notes that relate to each other.
6. Reflect. When students have finished putting their answers on the template and making connections, UT Drama for Schools recommends asking the following questions:
   • “What events, people or actions impact this person the most? Why?“
   • “Is this a realistic portrait of _____ ? Why or why not?“
   • “Does this character/person ever shift or change? Is there something that could make a change?“

Digital Templates

We’ve created two Jamboards for educators to use. Each hyperlink is set-up as a force copy. Directions in English are on page one and directions in Spanish are on page two. Have your entire class work together (or in small groups) on the same Jamboard or have students work on their own with individual Jamboards. As you will see, ample writing space exists outside the figure.

Jamboard with Complete Directions

• Click the hyperlink above for a force-copy. Teachers, you may want to offer additional prompts above on your BLEND page, out loud in the classroom, or in your own text box on the template.

Jamboard with Empty Space for Teacher to Insert Customized Directions

• For this “empty” template, teachers should create a new text box under the blue heading at left with your own tailored directions and prompts.
• Alternate even emptier! template, with no blue cartoon figure — teacher or students will need to draw their own figure in the grey space with the pen tool in Jamboard.

Variations, Ideas, and Scaffolding Tips for Success

Social studies teachers: this activity aligns well with Facing History’s Character Maps. Like Role on the Wall, educators can annotate Character Maps (head, mouth, heart, stomach, hands, feet, etc.) to prompt students to think about communication, messaging, intent, and impact. Consider incorporating questions on Facing History’s sites, linked above. Character Maps also ask students to add evidence like documents, images, videos, and more to their annotations. Consider asking students to use and give evidence, beyond quotes from a text, when doing Role on the Wall.

Instead of using the outline of a single cartoon/figure, students could use Role on the Wall about a certain group of people or a non-human character in a story.

Science teachers could have the character/figure be a certain environment or ecosystem, for example. The prompt could ask students to think about the external and internal forces impacting or changing the environment/ecosystem, and the effects of those forces.

If students are working in groups, they might choose to use stickers or other tools to show how many group members agree with or share a particular statement or observation.

For younger learners, the teacher should lead the full class in Role on the Wall, using the same Jamboard. The teacher can model examples of answers to prompts, or offer sentence stems. The teacher can add new Post-It notes to the figure based on students’ answers and reflections, instead of having students create and write notes on their own.

This activity can be done multiple times, applied to different curricular topics, to help students learn the routine and pattern. This activity connects with SEL, and might be used as a private reflection activity for students to process the explicit and/or implicit external & internal influences & messages they are receiving, being impacted by, and/or communicating in their own lives.