Reader’s Theater is an amazing tool to utilize with students at so many levels. I first discovered it through my daughter’s kindergarten teacher, and it quickly became a staple of my upper elementary reading lessons.
At first, I had no idea how to implement it into my classroom with all of the other instructional components of my day, but I knew fluency was something that we needed to enhance. Our test scores were not where they needed to be, and I wanted to make fluency work fun, so we tried some of the different scripts in our curriculum program.
By having this additional fluency practice, I began to notice my students were much more animated readers. No longer were they just racing the clock and reading words as quickly as possible; instead, they were much more expressive. Their recognition of tone and punctuation cues increased dramatically.
After a couple years of using textbook scripts, I decided to write a few of my own that were inspired by my own students’ antics and adventures. This enabled me to include other components that I knew my students needed additional work on: extended response questions, context clue word work, and prompt writing. My students loved these “realistic fiction” scripts even more!
Here are a few high-interest scripts and resources to try with your upper elementary classroom. I’ve built up an entire collection that covers all of the different seasons, holidays, and classroom interests you can think of. Now you can incorporate reader’s theater into any school day!
For Spring and St. Patrick’s Day…
For EVERYDAY fun…
To enhance a study on FABLES…
For discussions on TRYING YOUR BEST…
To teach about our American History…
While it helps to have a group that is willing to perform, I’ve found that the enthusiasm of the class is often contagious. Those students who are reserved at first will become more comfortable and engaged as you incorporate reader’s theater into your instruction. Soon you’ll see students crossing their fingers for the characters with the most lines!
These are just some of the scripts I have written over the years. I’ve finally reached my goal of having a reader’s theater option for almost every event during the school year! Whether I want to break up my routine to drive more engagement, or provide my subs with a new activity, having a variety of reader’s theater scripts gives me the tools to adjust in a pinch.
