Readers' Theatre

Readers' Theatre

Here's a great resource I stumbled across for Readers' Theatre:
http://www.teachingheart.net/readerstheater.htm

In addition to a brief summary, it has free downloadables aimed at K-3 but may also be useful for some EFL contexts.

For my 2nd year uni students in Japan, I let them choose their own stories to perform in groups of 3-5. They either chose excerpt from graded readers or movie scripts which were featured regularly (with plenty of L1 support) in the weekly, English student newspaper, The Japan Times ST (that our uni had a subscription to):
http://st.japantimes.co.jp/

Although some students were initially reluctant, they could all find roles and most students had a lot of fun doing it. Like many new activities and tasks, however, it usually takes a couple of times before students (as well as the teacher) get into it so it's good to remember a former colleagues words, "I'll try anything twice!"

Comments

  1. Penny UrNovember 26, 2017 at 7:29 AM

    Right!
    But remember that the implementation of the principle of 'reader's theater' (performing something as you read it aloud) is not limited to written dialogues (plays, movie scripts), as it seems to be in most 'reader's theater' websites I've seen. It works beautifully for poems and also with extracts from the seemingly most unpromising prose excerpts from articles, reports, anything! A bit from your latest reading comprehension text! The students just have to decide who says what and how, and how they're going to use voice, repetition, movement, etc. to get the meanings across and engage their audience.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Phil BrownNovember 26, 2017 at 7:42 AM

    Penny Ur Thanks. That's a really good reminder to draw on a wider range of resources at our disposal. I guess students could also even use their own text messages if they want ;-)

    ReplyDelete

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