I'm certain most of my listeners have employed simulations and role play in their class. It's a great way to learn. This episode demonstrates how you can combine role-play and simulations with my favorite student activity.

I love Socratic seminars! They’re the embodiment of self-directed learning and student collaboration. Kids take a complex topic, learn about it, and then sit in a circle with their peers and apply it, discuss it, explain it, and ask questions to one another. My experience has been that concepts, events, and topics covered in this fashion leads to deep understanding and significant engagement. But everything, even things you and your students love, will get old if you don’t alter it occasionally.

I faced this dilemma in teaching the incredibly complex topic which is the Syrian Civil War. I wanted students to engage in a Socratic Seminar, but I wanted it to be different. We had conducted a number of such seminars and I felt the format was getting a bit stale. So...I decided that in order for my students to understand the Syrian Civil War, they needed to become the powerful actors involved.