Composing oral poems and storytelling are two exercises that speech teachers can use in oral interpretation courses. Conducting the oral poetry exercise early in an introductory interpretation course allows students to become acquainted with each other and to encourage each other while sharing something of themselves with the entire class. This…

This study was designed to examine factors associated with literal interpretations of homonyms. Participants were 212 second graders, ages 7;0-8;11, who listened to a story containing 16 key words. The key words were homonymous words ("pseudo-homonyms"), nonsense words, or familiar words used accurately. While listening to the story, children…

Suggesting that Readers Theatre is a simple, effective, and risk-free way to get K-8 children reading, this book provides strategies, organizers, and scripts that can be used as is or as models for readers' own scripts. The book provides ideas for planning and organizing Readers Theatre; oral interpretation; connecting Readers Theatre to…

This book provides teachers, children, and parents with knowledge about children's literature and the oral interpretation of it. The procedures, suggestions, and resources in the book are intended to develop oral interpretation skills in the young reader and to assist the adult reader in improving his own skills. The content is divided into five…

The 12 articles in this issue of "Indiana English Journal" are concerned with drama and oral interpretation in the classroom. Titles of articles are: "Up in the Tree, Down in the Cave, and Back to Reading: Creative Dramatics"; "Pantomime: The Stepping Stone to Drama"; "The Living Literature of Readers' Theatre"; "Do-It-Yourself Drama"; "Drama for…

A teacher describes her use of oral family history and story telling to develop students' language skills. Guidelines for obtaining oral histories, developing a specific story, teaching acting techniques, and preparing for performance are offered. (DB)

This introductory article discusses the development of oral interpretation skills to promote literature in the classroom as part of the whole language curriculum. Benefits of listening to adults read aloud and telling stories are discussed, and the importance of listening skills and audience etiquette is described. (LRW)

A high school library media specialist uses storytelling regularly in her oral presentations for students. For an audience of adolescents, stories need to be selected carefully and edited to keep the action moving. Music and character voices are effective in capturing and holding teenagers' attention. Storytelling is a tool for curriculum…

The curriculum outlined in this document was designed for the creative teacher to use in a learning environment which encourages pupils to experiment, to explore, to develop a positive self-image, and to express ideas freely and without fear of losing dignity. This document defines 19 drama skills and describes drama activities, with suggested…

Shows that storytelling can be used in elementary language classes to build self-esteem among students, because telling stories drawn from their memories reveals students' lifelong relationship with language. Emphasizes the importance of choosing appropriate stories to tell, and discusses an activity where students retell the story of a book they…

Preliminary results of a comparison of the language modifications made by teachers when telling stories to native English speakers and non-native speakers of English at various proficiency levels suggest that teachers need to do more than make the routine modifications in linguistic input to lower-level learners. Teachers need to: (1) act on the…

This performance guide is the result of work conducted at the University of Virginia's National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute, 1989, on "Spanish Literature in Performance," in which 25 secondary school Spanish teachers studied Spanish texts from the perspective of classroom performance to deepen knowledge of the texts and…

Oral interpretation facilitates the learning processes of adolescents by making the presentation of subject matter more interesting and meaningful to them, helping them feel involved, and providing them with an opportunity to perceive literature in action. Narrative literature is a good place to begin oral interpretation activities, since…

In an eleventh-grade unit, students studied and practiced the art of storytelling and then went into elementary classrooms to tell stories to first-grade and second-grade children. Students prepared for the storytelling sessions by reading books on storytelling techniques, inviting a local storyteller to class and then videotaping and studying her…

The views and practices of literacy advocates who focus on workplace literacy foster an impoverished understanding of adult literacy and, ultimately, life itself. They reduce literacy to something that is "functional" in the reductive sense of serving someone else's ends as a functionary. A "functionally literate" person is a consumer of someone…