Reader's Theatre

I had a great opportunity to try Reader's Theatre during my practicum. The novel study groups were finishing and my teacher suggested I teach Reader's Theatre with "There's a boy in the girl's bathroom". I found information on how to teach Reader's theatre on the ReadWriteThink website http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=172 in particular I used the tips from Aaron Shepard. These are good tips as the lesson and presentation went well. The section of the story I chose was a highlight with a basketball game and almost a fight, but not the climax. The section had lots of speaking lending itself to theatre but it still took time to organize the scripts. Following the tips from Aaron, I had every student act more than one character and deleted quite a bit of the naration. On each student's script their parts were highlighted with a different colours for each character they would read. For less extravert students I had a couple of scripts with less speaking parts.

When we read the scripts the students suggested actions, and staging. The students added voice changes and facial expressions. One narrator volunteered to ask the lesson closure question. It was great to see the student's take control.