Discusses the advantages of using reader's theatre over other dramatic activities, as well as ways to implement reader's theatre in the classroom. (HTH)

Tells how a Readers Theatre company adapted their methods for use in classroom workshops, teacher workshops, and performances at a school for hearing impaired children. Available from: Readers Theatre News, Speech Communication Department, San Diego State University, San Diego, California 92182. (GW)

During the 1950s, when it first began, Readers Theatre was textual in its emphasis; it involved the group reading of literature and the staging of poems and poets' stories, essays, and scenes. In its second stage, during the sixties, Readers Theatre became a directors' art; it was the director who adapted and arranged the literature and whose…

Suggests that elementary school students could benefit from Readers Theatre, a dramatic procedure in which the roles are read by individual performers without conventional staging. Readers Theatre is more formal than activities such as group reading or library playreading as students practice and interpret roles. Positive educational outcomes are…

Suggests that, from nursery school throughout the elementary years, teachers can encourage children to participate in dramatizations by incorporating dramatic experiences into the classroom context. Provides guidelines for implementing a variety of drama activities--dramatic play, story drama, readers theater, role playing, and other creative…

Readers theatre can be an effective means of engaging children in responding to and studying literature in an enjoyable manner. It allows children time to master a part so they will be able to interpret passages instead of reading a new passage each time without practice or thoughtful consideration of the character or mood. It requires an…

Suggests ways to use readers theatre programs to teach literature while polishing reading skills. (DD)

A variety of ways to use television, drama, and music to enhance reading instruction are presented in this paper. The use of television is suggested as a motivator for reading and as a means to teach reading skills, and the use of books with television or movie tie-ins is suggested as a way to motivate readers. Sources for obtaining television…

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)

This article describes Readers Theater (a form of group storytelling in which two or more readers present a piece of literature by reading aloud from hand-held scripts) and advocates its use in the classroom. The paper's seven sections are as follows: (1) What is Readers Theater; (2) Readers Theater and Its Conventions (discussing scripts,…

This book contains more than two dozen reader's theater scripts to entertain and amuse those in the classroom or library. The scripts in the book--all are reproducible--can help nurture student language arts skills and the power of the imagination with their fractured "takes" on fairy tales and their twisted legends. Designed to…

Readers' theater has much to offer at all levels of student development. When incorporating readers' theater into the curriculum, definite principles of learning from educational psychology need to be emphasized, including: meaningful experiences for students; provision for individual differences among students; and appropriate sequence in…

Reviews recent research findings concerning the benefits of Readers Theater for building oral reading accuracy and fluency and identifies key guidelines for instructional implementation. Presents recommendations and conclusions that place the focus on guidelines for classroom teachers who might want to experiment with Readers Theater as they work…

Proposes that the Internet can be a valuable source of information for teachers who use or plan to use Readers Theatre in their classrooms. Provides a brief description of Readers Theatre and its many benefits for literacy learning. Describes Internet sources for scripts and for information on implementation, additional classroom applications, and…

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…