Readers' Theatre, It's Showtime!!!!!

Hello again readers!!, this week I would like to dive in the exciting world of the theatre, but from a different perspective. During the last seminar with Raquel, we discovered an extraordinary resource called Readers' Theatre. Besides, we had the opportunity to work with different scripts designed to different cycles, and I must say that some of the voices of the classmates were hilariously funny. Moreover, this tool is completely feasible with the CLIL approach, because using it you are going to work:

• Communication, through the preparation of the performance.
• Culture, depending on your approach to the text.
• Cognition, because the students can develop themselves their scripts helping them to develop the learning to learn.
• Content, because you can use any text even if is a part of a book lesson.
• Language literacy, because children can adapt and rebuild the text eliciting their language comprehension.
• High Order Thinking, at the time of create the script of the texts.

But, what is it exactly?, it is a dramatic performance of whatever written text, in which the students reads aloud the text emphasizing the expressions, pace and articulation of the words rather than just act. To do that, they use a script as a guide or way to divide the text into the different students or characters. Besides, it is not necessary to have any costume, background stage and all the things that usually accompany the theatre plays.

Equally important is that, it is not based on memorize the text, because each student held their script. The real focus is on reading comprehension. Moreover, and in order to contextualize the text, the children should read the script with expressive voices and gestures. Furthermore, using the Readers’ Theatre scripts you are going to encourage the students to monitor and improve their reading fluency and also to foster the cooperative and collaborative work.

• Example of implementation in Science: "The types of Ecosystems"

Firstly you should provide them some guidelines and scaffolding, showing them examples of scripts and how they can do it in order to work as a model for them. Then, students should elaborate  in small groups the script following the textbook (depending on their age the teacher maybe have to provide them the script). After that, they should highlight the part of each one in order to follow better and underline the key words in which they are going to put more emphasis. Finally, they will perform the script taking into account for example the different animals related to each type of ecosystem and at the time that they read, they should imitate the sounds that the animals makes as well as using body language to move like them.

As a conclusion, I must say that as far as I’m concerned this could be the most suitable way to adapt the texts for your students enhancing the comprehension and promoting meaningful learning in a funny way. Apart of that, and as I said before, I believe that using the scripts we help the children to develop their fluency and their reading skills as well as improving their pronunciation and their pace at the time to speak. 

As a Christmas gift, I leave you some interesting links about this tool in which you will find lots of scripts to use in class and relevant information about how to use it, enjoy:

• Scripts:
• The Best Class.
• Readers' Theatre.
• Fiction Teachers.
• Aaron Shepard website.
• Additional Information:
• Education World. 
• Reading Online. (there are a great procedure for implementation)
• Aaron Shepard website. (good tips not only for scripting, but also for reading and stating)

See you soon Readers!!!!!!