Using Reader's Theatre to Increase Students' Creativity and Inference Skills

I love Reader's Theater. When I am looking for a short play for my class to perform. I often will choose a royalty free reader's theatre piece. For those who don't know Reader's Theater is a great addition to any classroom. It is a great way to engage the students and have them increase their reading fluency and creativity at the same time. Reader’s Theatre can be as simple or as complex as you want. Students can read from their chairs or create a full production. 

Reasons I love Reader's Theater

1. Easily engages all students- most students will pay more attention if they know they must speak at a certain time.
2. Easily differentiates for  different learning styles/levels- the same script can have advanced parts and easier parts so that all students feel successful.
3.  Easy group work- My favorite scripts are ones that have 4-6 characters. You can easily divide up your groups into different plays and have heterogeneous mixture of ability levels and all engaged.
4. Easy whole group instruction- Most plays can either be adapted to fit a whole group or just naturally come with enough parts for everyone in class. This way you can easily assess all student's level of engagement and understanding of a topic. 
5. Increased reading fluency-To be able to perform a play students must practice and rehearse. RT forces students to read their material multiple times. The more often they read a script the more often they see words, the better they will become at reading. 
6. Increases inference ability- Scripts very rarely state things explicitly, instead students must learn to infer emotions, costumes, feeling, props and all other aspects of the story based on simply dialog. Students who become proficient at RT become great investigators who are able to easily infer meaning from texts. 

Hopefully I have convinced you to give Reader's Theatre a try. If you are always using Reader's Theater in your classroom, read on to see how you can use RT to increase student's inference skills.

Character Analysis

Have students create a character analysis of their character. This is a great time to talk about internal vs external traits. I often like to have the students draw a picture of what they think the character's external traits are, then answer some questions on their internal traits. Be very careful not to let any students "off the hook" about character analysis. There are character choices you can make about even the smallest of characters.  You will often things like "my character only has one line I dont know anything about him" Have the student analyze what the character said, where the character lives, how old the character is etc. If they cannot find explicitly in the play an answer, have them make an educated guess then back up their reasoning "I think this character is 27 because they have one small kid". I would also warn you to be aware of the narrator trap. Most RT scripts contain a narrator. You can still do character analysis on a narrator. Look at if the narrator is biased, how intelligent the narrator is, if the narrator enjoys telling the story etc. 

Technical Analysis

Technical elements of theatre include the props, costumes, sound, lighting, and sets used in a production. Often times a playwright does not explicitly say what these elements look like. While they might give suggestions, "this play is set in a one room school house" they often leave the logistics up to the director (how many chairs you want, if you need a blackboard, etc). Allowing students to begin designing the technical elements for a reader's theatre production forces students to use their inference and reasoning skills. For example we recently completed a RT about Tall Tales from the Wild West. In the play John Henry, Pecos Bill, Sally Ann Thunder, Annie Oakley and Paul Bunion all get together to swap stories. Students had to infer the setting (a campfire) the time of day (night) and the costumes. Students did research of the costumes their characters might wear by looking up information on their character. They had to design a nighttime campfire scene to set the play in. We discussed how to make the room look dark without completely turning off all lights because the audience had to see them. They choose to use blue and purple lights to give the effect. Having students create a technical analysis of a play is a great way to build inference and creativity. Keep in mind students can simply propose ideas if you do not have the time/money to actually create props and costumes.

Program Design

Program design is a great way to engage and asses your more visual learners. If you have students who love to draw and create this part of the project is perfect for them. Students create a four page program (front cover) cast list, play synopsis, and back advertisement.  The cover must include the Title, Playwright, and Performance time/place. It also must include a picture that captures the essence of the play and makes people want to see it. Students then write up the cast list and a play summary. The summary is obviously a great way to check for understanding of the key plot points. On the back cover of the program I let students design an add for an upcoming performance. If you aren't holding any more performances let them create an add for a play they would love to perform. Once again this can either be a simple classroom assignment that all students complete, or you can have students design your actual programs for the performance.

Ticket Design/ Poster Design

Another great way to engage students in RT is to allow them to create the posters and tickets for the performance. If you want this to be a classroom assignment you can but I would encourage you to perform the play for someone (even if it is just another class that wants to come watch). Students can create posters and actually hang them up around school to advertise their show. They can also take posters home to parents to display on the fridge. Tickets are another great design piece. If you decide to do this production for parents, letting the students take handmade tickets home to give to parents, then collecting those tickets at the door, really adds a since of flair to the productions. Students get a huge kick out of putting on "a real performance" with tickets. As with the program design students must use their inference skills to find an important scene to display. They need to find a scene that is engaging and important but doesn't give to much away. They need to be able to infer what will make the audience come and see the production.

Reader's Theatre Unit

I love Reader's Theatre. If you are interested in using RT in your classroom, make sure you check out my Reader's Theatre Unit on teacherspayteachers. It has worksheets for all the items discussed in this post. It is a great packet to use with any RT production you might choose. If you need any help coming up with ideas of how to run RT in your class or simply need ideas of plays that might work for you feel free to contact me or leave me a comment. I am always willing to help fellow teachers who are trying out a play!

Have you ever use reader's theatre in your class? What were the difficulties? Did you find that RT engaged your students?

3 Free Theatre Arts Integration Strategies that Work

My school is great! My principal has really embraced the idea of arts integration throughout our entire building. She really wants to make sure that all teachers have the tools they need to be able to integrate the fine arts into the core Curriculum. She has even brought in professional artists in each area to give professional development. It's great. What's not so great, the advice i always hear from the theatre pd. For some reason every professional development i attend that talks about integrating theatre into classroom falls back on one vocab word: tableaux.

I hate tableaux! There I said it. For those that don't know a tableaux is a frozen stage picture. Students can create a picture of anything, a scene from a play, the food chain, a land-form, a story, a moment in history. It's all very helpful, but I am one of the few theatre teachers who cannot stand tableaux. I realize that if you are a core teacher, making the kids freeze is a lot less scary then letting them move. But really isn't moving part of the fun?

Since I hate tableaux so much, it makes me so sad to see professional development that only encourages teachers to have the students freeze. I decided I had to do something about it. So I now present to you: 

3 Theatre Arts Integration Strategies that Work

Story Time Freeze

This is for the teacher that loves tableaux, who is scared to let the students move much. Every story has a beginning, middle, and end. Whether that story is a moment in History or the food chain. Have students create a frozen picture of the beginning middle and end of their story. This not only gets students thinking about the order of a story but also has them work on transitions and how characters and things change throughout en event.

Pantomime

If you don't like noise, but don't mind a little chaos, pantomime is for you! Pantomime or mime is when you act without words. Having students try to convey a topic without using their voice takes a lot of creativity. For example, how could you act out the signing of the deceleration of independence without words, how could you show the parts of a cell and their jobs without words? This activity is great. You can always have the students explain their performance afterward (or they could write about it). I love pantomime as a well to demonstrate knowledge.

Press Conference

This is a great differentiation strategy. Choose a few of your advanced students to be your character (parts of a plant, planets, members of parliament). These students will answers all the questions in character. All of your other students will be the reporters that interview your guests. You can either have the students submit their questions or let them ad-lib their questions. Your interviewers should ask their questions. You can then have them write a newspaper article about the interview. 

Download my free lesson plan guide with more information on these strategies. Don't forget to follow my blog and TeachersPayTeachers site for more awesome freebies.

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Arts Integration Ideas- Historical Monologues

One of the major pushes in Education right now is Arts Integration. Theatre is one of the easiest Fine Arts subjects to integrate. Throughout this blog I will talk about several ways to use theatre to enhance Common Core Curriculum. Today I want to talk about one of the first arts integration lessons I did. This lesson is my go to lesson when I need to show off my students in an Educational Setting. My students have presented this lesson in front of our Superintendent and all the principals in my county. All to often the "higher ups" in the county view theatre and other Fine Arts subjects as fluff. This assignment helped change the minds of the "higher ups" in my county. Hopefully you can use it to help change people's minds as well.

I would partner with your History or ELA teacher in doing this project. Since I only see the kids once a week for 40 minutes partnering is a must if I want the students to write anything. They just don't have time to in my class. 

Step one- have the students bring their history books to class. I then have them search through the book to find a historical person that inspires them. (I typically base this assignment around Black History Month but you could easily focus on any other topic you wanted to- presidents, women, heroes etc).

Step two- once the students have chosen their person, have them research specifics about that person. Depending on your time limits and the age of your students you can either create an outline for them to complete or simply have them write their five favorite facts .

Step three- have the students choose  their person's most exciting life event (Rosa Parks on the bus, Abe Lincoln before Gettysburg, etc) 

Step four- teach the difference between a monologue and soliloquy. Have students choose if they are going to write a monologue or soliloquy. 

Step five- allow students time to write a monologue from their historical person's point of view. Remind students that the soliloquy needs to be written in first person pov and they need to include what the person is thinking or feeling. If they are writing a monologue it still needs to be in first person but they should be talking to another person. Most of your students will probably end up writing soliloquies and that's great!

Step six- Once the monologues are written it is time to begin the rehearsal process. When students are rehearsing I like to set up rehearsal centers so that they can focus on individual aspects of their piece. I have also had students partner up to rehearse or you can simply embrace the chaos and let all the students rehearse together. If you are new to teaching or an English/Social Studies teacher who is not use to allowing rehearsals in the room keep in mind it will get noisy. I like to set up some basic rules (no talking to other groups, no wandering from your general area, etc. )You might want to keep a noise meeter in your room to warn kids if they get to loud. You could also take them to a gym/ outside area where they have more space to spread out. In my experience since the students know that they have to perform the piece they typically use the rehearsal period to their advantage with very little silliness. Make sure you tell the students before they start if their monologue has to be memorized.

Step Seven- Perform monologues for the class.  I would tell the students that they can dress the part if they want to . These performances typically turn out very well and all of the students learn things about the other famous historical figures as well.  When you have your performance day make sure you talk it up. You might even want to invite another class to come and watch the performances.

Step Eight- Grade the performances. Make sure you check out my Theatre Rubrics at the teacherspayteachers store. The rehearsal, script writing, and acting rubrics can be very useful in determining grades.

Make sure you keep a copy of the student's monologues that you liked. That way you have any easy demonstration piece for an observation or showcase.  Parents and teachers love to see kids participating in cross curricular activities and this is a wonderful chance to show your teachers what the students know.

Alternative Assignments:
Living Wax Museum- This is one of our favorite assignments at my school (and the kindergartners and first graders are the performers for the older students). Follow the exact same instructions for the lesson. When you reach step six have all of the students report to the gym. Give each student a "Button" to place in front of their character (Red Circle cut out of construction paper usually works well). All the students must then freeze in an exciting pose behind their button. When someone steps on their "button" they come to life, say their monologue then go back to freezing. This is a great assignment for other classes to come participate in. This is also great for students who get stage fright because they are only performing in front of one/two people at a time.

Literary Characters- You can use this same assignment but have the students create monologues for the book characters you are reading. Bonus points if they have to use so many sentences from the book.  Great say to engage the students in the reading.

Students as Playwrights and Directors Part 2 (The Director)

Last post I wrote about how to help students creatively write a story that they can use in this lesson. Part one is a great lesson for any drama/ ELA teacher. You can decided to skip part one or you can use another method for helping students create a story (you can also just pull short scripts if you would rather use something more authentic). Regardless of your method make sure you have a unique story available for every student.

In doing this project I did something I have never done before. I didn't let every play perform. Every group performed at least once, but every play was not performed on stage. Check out below for how I worked this system. As a theatre teacher, the idea that not everyone was going to perform their play killed me but there simply wasn't time. I mean can you imagine getting through 30 plays in 40 minutes, it just doesn't work. Not having every play performed was actually more freeing then I thought it would be. It gave me the freedom to choose which groups were clicking during rehearsal and allowed me to facilitate more class discussion. I will definitely be using this method again. 

Step 1- hand out stories to each student. These can either be the stories they wrote in part one, a creative story they wrote at another time or  a play you found. After every student has a story divide the students into groups. I made groups of four but feel free to adjust as need. I would recommend not having more than 5 in a group for time reasons. Once students are their groups assign a director order.(director 1, director 2, and so on). I did this randomly but you could assign an order as well.

Step 2- review the role of a director and actor. Director is in charge of casting, running rehearsals, and making final decisions. Actors are in charge of creating a character and practicing their parts. This is a great time to talk about how you need to show respect for everyone. I also point out that  the director gets to make the final call about all decisions and I will only step in for emergencies. I also point out that sometimes you don't like the part you are assigned (and sometimes boys play girl parts and girls play boy parts). Everyone had to do what the director said and they couldn't tattle if they didn't like their part. I did encourage the directors to be kind when casting, and if they had to change the gender of a character to make someone happy that was ok. 

Step 3- Model a rehearsal. This is a huge step. Do. Not Skip. Students need to learn how to lead. If possible choose a group with a weird number (there is always one with more than everyone else). Have one of those students be your model for this experience. I recommend giving the directors an exact order for what their rehearsals should look like, this will help you when grading later.

1. Read the story to the group.

2. Cast the play

3. Perform any rewrites or revisions that are needed (should not take very long)

4. Block the play (tell the actors where to stand and move)

5. Rehearse the play until time is called. Make any other revisions/ changes that are needed.

6. Director reads the play while the group performs.

For the modeling section I recommend you talk the students through each step. This way they know what to expect when it's their turn.

Step 4- director 1 rehearsal time. Now it is time to turn your directors loose in each group tell director one to begin reading their play and casting. Walk around and monitor groups but try your hardest to let the directors work their problems out with their team (after all that is what is being a director is all about). After the allotted time (5-10 minutes) have the groups sit back down and choose one or two groups to perform their plays. This is also a great time to have a class discussion about any issues that arose during rehearsal. We had a great talk about how it affects a play when one actor doesn't show up (after a kid had to go to the clinic during class). It really helped the kids to see how they affect each other in a performance.

Step 5- director 2 and so on rehearsal times. After a few groups perform director 1 plays allow the students to break back into their groups and rehearse director 2's play. Continue this process of rehearsal and performance until all directors have had an opportunity to direct. Make sure that every group has performed at least once by the end of assignment. Continue to have class discussions between the steps as problems arise. This is a great opportunity to highlight problems you have been having in rehearsal as well. ( I have a huge problem with kids talking to each other during rehearsal, I made sure to point out how frustrating it is when you are trying to direct and someone is talking to another group). These discussions are so helpful and I really saw an improvement in the acting and directing over the course of the lesson.

Step 6- exit slips. I had each student write about who they felt was the best director in their group. They had to give me a legitimate reason why they felt that way (he was good at giving directions, she was organized, he told me where to stand, etc.) This served two purposes, I was able to see who they thought was the best director and I was able to tell if the students could identify positive director traits. You could do this step on appear or verbally as you were summing up the lesson.

Grading- if you have the students perform both parts of this lesson you can easily get three grades out of this assignment: a writing grade, rehearsal grade, and director grade. I always use rubrics when grading this type of work. Here is a sample of the directing rubric I made for the class. Feel free to download and use in your class as well. You can purchase the full set of theatre rubrics on my teacherspayteachers site (follow the link at the bottom of the page).

This is a great assignment and the students really got into it. I have always struggled with hitting the directing standard in my lower grades. I will defiantly be using this again in my class.