Plainsailing through the ABC's

Drama Plays - Reader's Theatre

Introduction: Reader's theater is minimal theater in support of literature and children's reading. Originally popular on college campuses, reader's theater has now moved to earlier education, where it is seen as a key tool for creating interest in reading. Children love to do it, and they give it their all - more so because it's a team effort. They learn more than just language, reading comprehension and speech, but also social interaction, cooperation and appreciation. Reader's theater has been found effective not only for language arts but for social studies as well.

Readers' theatre is an interpretive oral reading activity. Students use their voices, facial expressions and hand gestures to interpret characters in scripts or stories. Teachers and students will adapt famous children's stories for readers' theatre through collaborative script writing activities. Reader's theatre serves purposes for:

1. Group Writing - collaborative script writing
2. Reading and understanding of the story world and characters
3. Sharing their learning and interpretation for creating imaginative space for expression
4. Expressive Oral Reading/ Reading aloud
5. Performing/ sharing

The program provides a simple, effective and risk-free way to get children to enjoy reading. As children write, read, perform and interpret their roles, they acquire a better understanding of the literature. This effective program fosters a love for reading/ book with no drill or force and it has the following traits:

• No full memorization. Scripts are held during performance.
• No full costume. If used at all, costumes are partial and suggestive, or neutral and uniform.
• No full stage sets. If used at all, sets are simple and suggestive.
• Narration forms the framework of dramatic presentation.
• Focus purely on language and speech, literature response activity

For more information on course schedule and enrollment, please contact us.