I thought I would do a question and answer post about reader’s theater on the blog today. My husband and I have being doing reader’s theater at home with Tim and he loves it!
What is Reader’s Theater?
Reader’s Theater is when a story or a part of a story is turned into a script with parts. Props, costumes, sets, etc. are not often used, but can be if you want. Children practice their part or parts many times working on connecting their words together as they read, pausing at the punctuation marks, reading with expression etc.
How will Reader’s Theater help my child with reading?
Reader’s Theater significantly helps children’s reading fluency and helps them read more automatically. Reader’s theater makes reading social in that it can involve family members, siblings or friends. Also, it gives children a purpose for reading the same story again in that they can perform, once they have practiced their parts. Most importantly, it is motivating for children because it is so much fun!!
What is the research behind Reader’s Theater and where can I find out more info?
Check out this brief article from Education World that discusses the benefits of Reader’s Theater. There are also some helpful links to scripts. https://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/profdev/profdev082.shtml
How do you do Reader’s Theater at home?
Usually I will take a short book or a part of a book and type it up in script form on a word document to print out. This usually doesn’t take me longer than 15-20 minutes to do. The script doesn’t need to be very long. There are also lots of places where you can find scripts ready to print. Keep scrolling to find links.
Recently I found a couple of Rigby books on ebay . (Rigby books are books that are often used to teach guided reading in schools.) The Gingerbread Man was one of those books and it happened to have a play at the back. We divided parts so that we each had two parts. Tim wanted to be the fox and the narrator.
First we read through the parts to connect our words and pause at the punctuation marks. Then we worked on expression and focusing on emphasizing certain words in bold or capital letters. I did some modeling and gave Tim specific feedback. See the previous post. https://learningtoreadtogether.com/ways-to-increase-reading-fluency/
We talked about the fox and the word “sly” and how to read the part in a “sly” voice and a little slower. Tim had so much fun that he wanted to switch parts and we have practiced this script many times.
I wish that I had a before and after video because there is such an improvement in his reading after practicing. I am still figuring out how to put videos into my blog, but I have a video of Tim performing part of the script on my Instagram. Here is the link. https://www.instagram.com/learningtoreadtogether/
What books can I use to do Reader’s Theater at home?
Fiction would probably work best because of the dialogue, but you could use anything. You can make your own script by typing up a script in a word document from a fun 1-2 page dialogue in a chapter book that your child has read. Your child might even have fun creating his or her own script. You can also find already made scripts online. See below for links.
Where can I find some FREE Reader’s Theater scripts that are ready to print?
Here are some sites where you can find Reader’s Theater scripts. Many of these are fairy tales, classic stories and series that your child is familiar with such as Pete the Cat, The Three Little Pigs, etc. These are are all free and ready to print.
- http://www.teachingheart.net/readerstheater.htm
- http://www.thebestclass.org/rtscripts.html
- http://www.aaronshep.com/rt/RTE.html
- http://www.timelessteacherstuff.com/
- https://books.disney.com/content/uploads/2015/04/Star-Wars-Theater-Guide-VFINAL.pdf