The authors explored the impact of a novel, interactive performing arts-based program on students' writing skills. The program featured the Story Pirates, a group that teaches children how to write stories and then turns their stories into a musical sketch comedy show. Written stories from the third-grade students in an elementary school were…

This article shares key steps in how to negotiate writing Readers Theatre scripts with English learners or any small group of students. The author aims to help promote language and literacy development and encourage critical thinking and engagement through the powerful modality of Readers Theatre.

Readers Theatre has been used to introduce critical issues, promote fluency among English learners and non-English learners, teach vocabulary, and integrate content in the classroom. Previous studies of Readers Theatre application have demonstrated an increase in student reading fluency, motivation, and confidence. The focus of this systemic…

Increased emphasis on standardization in primary grades can stifle spontaneous literacy play. The authors argue that allowing playful, collaborative, multimodal literacies into primary classrooms and specifically in writers' workshop can expand and enliven the way we see students' literacy strengths. The authors look closely at the unique…

This article describes how Readers Theatre was implemented as an engaging means for reading fluency instruction in a second-grade classroom. A weekly Readers Theatre format was utilized over the course of a school year. The format was added to the existing literacy program. Data collected during the school year revealed significant gains in…

This article discusses two activities--Readers Theatre and Rhythm Walks--that encourage students to "get moving" with fluency instruction. Movement can be a motivating factor for struggling students, as well as a kinesthetic tool for conceptualizing the rhythm and flow of fluent reading while triggering brain function for optimal learning. Also…

Learning to write well often proves to be one of the most difficult areas in the English language arts for young children. However, in these fourth- and fifth-grade language arts classrooms, children are offered opportunities to explore, think through, and express meaning across and within sign systems--in particular, using art, drama, and…

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)