Using a theater arts thematic approach to demonstrate ways listening, speaking, and writing activities can be built around the study of works of literature, this guide presents activities and sample lessons to help students develop an awareness of the interrelationships between performance and the language arts. Following an introduction, the first section offers strategies for helping ensure students' mastery in constructing and restructuring the meaning of what they have read. Included in the methods of instruction are strategies to help students think before, after, and about reading. The next section outlines a sequence for directed instruction in reading, and subsequent sections describe the program objectives and ways for teachers of students with special needs to modify the lessons in the manual. These are followed by a section of sample aims and performance objectives, and a checklist and guidelines for classroom critics. The bulk of the guide consists of sample lesson plans for the following: (1) preparatory activities, (2) unit based on a play, (3) mythology unit, (4) short story unit, and (5) unit based on a novel. The manual concludes with two appendixes, one providing definitions of readers theater and the other an annotated bibliography of sources on oral interpretation and readers theater. (AEW)