What is Readers Theater?

Readers theater is an instructional strategy used to build reading fluency. Students practice reading a script through repeated readings and reading with expression. Teachers choose a script that will interest their students and has a variety of levels of difficulty to make the script accessible to all students. Students choose the part they'd like to perform and practice with their groups to read the play.

The Benefits

Readers theater builds fluency, which is described as reading with accuracy, automaticity, and prosody. Accuracy is a reader's ability to read words in a text correctly. Automaticity refers to reading without effort leaving cognitive energy for comprehension. Prosody is the ability to read with expression and chunk words into meaningful phrases. Reading fluency indicates a person's reading sounds like they're speaking. Notably, readers theater research indicates that students that read with expression have better comprehension (Young & Rasinsky, 2009)

Readers Theater Tips

You'll find using readers theater in your classroom is so much fun for you and the students. I've made plenty of mistakes so you don't have to. Here are some helpful tips that you'll find useful:

1. Hand out the script to your students and let them look through it.
2. Invite students to read each part with you. You read all the parts and let kids drop in when they feel comfortable. This is just to expose them to the script.
3. Ask students if anyone feels comfortable reading a part. Let them choose the part they'd like to read. Then have them practice reading the part they've chosen. You can have more than one kid doing a part at a time.
4. Give students about 5 to 7 minutes to practice their parts. Readers theater is meant to be practiced more than once and over the course of about a week.
5. Once kids are ready to read, introduce the play and say, “Action!”
6. At the end, give your students a hand. And wrap it up.
7. Take it out the next day and do it all over again. Let your students try a new part. You'll find that kids who were reluctant will gradually want bigger roles. You'll also find your struggling readers wanting to challenge themselves.

Don't expect perfection, just look forward to having fun. With each passing day, have students focus on something from the text. For example, pay attention to punctuation, intonation, and becoming the character.

Readers Theater for Kids

Choosing the right scripts for readers theater is important for kids to feel successful and to be engaged. A predictable story is by far the best choice. Most students are familiar with folktales like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Three Little Pigs, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Three Billy Goats Gruff. Since we want students to read with expression, these stories are the perfect way to practice. Familiar stories give students the opportunity to spend their energy practicing their expression rather than having to figure out what words are coming up next.

The Performance

How you have students perform is completely up to you. Experts recommend that students only use their voices and gestures to present, which I think is fine. But if you've done this and want to add something else, why not add a little sparkle to your day? You might have kids just read from their desks. Maybe they stand in front of the class. I've had students make props at the end of the school year to kill time. You know how that can be. Another suggestion could be a puppet show. The important part is for students to practice reading fluently.

Check out these scripts for readers theater. There's no doubt your students will love these plays.

The post Build Reading Fluency with This Magic Trick first appeared on Literacy Please.

Ugh! That was tough to write. But what is reading fluency, really? I'll tell you and I'll show give you ideas your kids will L-O-V-E.

Fluency includes three components:

Accuracy
Students often read a passage or book with fewer errors each time that selection is read. They learn new words, they use decoding strategies, and they just get better at that passage with several reads.

Rate
Rate is the speed at which a person reads. It's not too fast and it's not too slow.

Prosody
Prosody is reading like a storyteller. It's to read like we speak. We use expression and we chunk words into phrases. This speaking skill can be utilized during reading.

Here are some activities you can use to improve students' reading fluency.

Read Like a Storyteller
In this activity, kids retell a familiar story. Since the story is one that has been heard, they will tell the story like a storyteller.

Repeated Readings
Giving students the opportunity to read a passage several times allows them to get better at reading new words. Pointing out words that are difficult to decode, will help them read the passage smoothly. Graphing words read shows students how reading a passage several times increases over time.

Fluency Tic-Tac-Toe
We speak in phrases, or chunks. We do not speak one word at a time, but rather by several words at once. Chunking phrases from the story helps kids to practice prosody. And it's a game. It's a win-win.

Passage Puzzle
Passage puzzles are just another way to practice rereading, but this time students must comprehend the text. They will practice accuracy, rate, and prosody with this activity.

Rhythm Walk
Your kids will love this activity! Begin by chunking a passage into meaningful parts. Put one chunk on a page by itself. Set the “chunks” onto the floor like a path. Have students walk and read the passage to practice all components of fluency.

Readers Theater
Becoming a character is the best way to practice reading fluency. Students practice accuracy, rate, and prosody during readers theater. Not only are students practicing these skill, they are having tons of fun!

These activities can be used with any story. Improving fluency is essential for teaching kids to read. Here are some resources which include all of the activities you read about.

The post Ready, Set, Read! first appeared on Literacy Please.