Offers tips for Readers Theatre. Discusses equipment, script handling, the set, reader movement, mime and sound effects, focus, and beginnings and endings. (SR)

Shares five activities for use in the classroom that require active participation in reading by all students. Notes that in addition to ensuring time with text, the activities incorporate repeated reading, a practice that has been demonstrated to have a positive impact on students' reading ability. (SG)

Describes how second graders (in a bilingual class in which many of the students were nonreaders at the start of the school year) wrote and presented, over the course of the school year, their own Readers Theatre. (SR)

Discusses a yearlong study of a classroom's experience with Readers Theatre. Analyzes the "remedial" children's interpretive behaviors--language uses, body movements, comparative approaches, and affective interpretations--as they enacted literary texts in the theater of their own creation. Suggests that one solution to the problems of labeled…

Describes a teaching method designed to increase interest in oral reading and improve students' reading skills. (RB)

Describes how a middle-school teacher used "Charlotte's Web" in Reader's Theatre and in a writing workshop. Describes how the book was used as a writing model for dialog and for examining literary devices. (SR)

Discusses Readers Theatre, an instructional activity that combines several effective research-based practices, and leads to increased engagement with literacy even in very resistant readers. Considers the theory and research behind Readers Theatre. Describes the process of choosing and writing texts for performance, and preparing for performances.…

Describes a 10-week project in two second-grade classrooms that used daily Readers' Theatre experiences to develop children's meaningful and fluent reading. Discusses access to manageable materials, effective reading models, rereadings, instructional support and feedback, choosing the texts, and preparing. (SR)

Discusses ERIC documents pertaining to oral reading instruction. (FL)

Asserts that students gain a deeper appreciation and understanding of what they have read when they have systematic opportunities to integrate reading with drama, oral language, and art. Discusses how to use drama, Reader's Theater, oral interactions, and the visual arts to improve reading comprehension. (PRA)

Five contributors discuss the following topics: bringing comics to life through readers theatre, peer tutoring to improve word attack and comprehension skills, using storytelling to increase reading comprehension skills on Okinawa, beginning reading in Italy, and using remedial reading students as tutors for younger students. (FL)

Asserts that students' reading comprehension is enhanced by sharing personal text interpretations through social interaction in the reading classroom. Presents three lessons which encourage sharing and extending text comprehension by exploring text meaning through art; by developing a Readers Theatre script; and by shifting question-asking…

Offers an adaptation of Readers Theatre based on nonfiction trade books as an alternative to content area textbooks. Discusses the benefits of nonfiction trade books and of Readers Theatre. Offers guidelines for adapting materials to Readers Theatre scripts. Discusses suggested titles and sample script excerpts for health, math, science, and…

Argues that reading rate should not be ignored, but rather seen as evidence of excessively slow processing of text, and thus as a diagnostic indicator. Describes how excessively slow, disfluent reading leads to less overall reading, to reading frustration, and is associated with poor comprehension. Describes authentic and engaging instructional…

Outlines activities that encourage students' talking, reading, and writing about science in a way that supports both inquiry-based science instruction and a student-centered approach to literacy. Notes that talk is very important to science learning in the elementary classroom. Describes how writing "ecomysteries," dialogue journals, and grant…