Last week I wrote about the computer program called Read Naturally that we use in both small pull-out groups and as individuals in the classroom. (see last week's blog) This week I am going to describe Reader's Theater. Reader's Theater is a fun way that we work on fluency with the students. It is used in the regular classroom as well as in small pull-out groups for RTI. Reader's Theater scripts are just like scripts for a play. Each student has the role of one character in the play. The difference between a play and Reader's Theater, however, is that the students don't do any acting. They only use their voices to make their characters come alive. They practice their parts until they can read them fluently and then they work on expression and sometimes even accents or funny voices depending on their characters. Reader's Theater is a researched based method for helping students with their fluency. Of course, vocabulary is a byproduct, because they learn new words as they are reading the Reader's Theater scripts.
You can try this at home if you have several people willing to participate. Find a book that has a lot of talking between characters. Assign a character or two to each child and someone to be the narrator. If your child is a reluctant reader it might be better to have the parent start out as the narrator because the narrator parts are usually longer. The character reads only those parts that are in quotation marks. The narrator reads the rest. This breaks up the text in a different way than paragraph-by-paragraph or page-by-page. Children enjoy adding expression to their voices. Reader's Theater can also be done with poetry by splitting up the poem for different readers.
