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Robert Harrell on Readers Theatre
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7 thoughts on “Robert Harrell on Readers Theatre”
Just to say that I don’t really “choose” scenes to act out. I just wait until a scene seems to bubble with energy and interest – those are the scenes we try to act out. And we feel no pressure for it to be great theatre. But if a part of a chapter is boring, we just get through it. Not much RT happens in my classroom. I’m just too lazy.
This is good Robert
This is helpful, Robert. I’d never thought about running the same scene multiple times with different speeds or emotions. I have a few students who like to act/ham it up and I think this would work well for them.
thanks,
Lori
Last year I over used Reader’s Theater, and in a bad way. I was flopping with Step 3 in the sequence (PQA, Story-Asking, & Reading) and saw Reader’s Theater as a way for me to step back and avoid the struggle I was having with getting my students to read (in hindsight I realize my difficulty with step 3 fell mostly on asking them to read stories that were way to difficult for them).
At that time I noticed how students enjoyed being theatrical, even if the reader clunked their way through the text (I assigned the roles of Director, Reader, and Actors). But more often than not, the reading just became too cumbersome. The reader did not have the proficiency to make the experience comprehensible for everyone (except for my one class that had a couple of heritage speakers).
But I do want to try Reader’s Theater again, even if, as you say Robert, just occasionally. I won’t use a director this time, just a reader and actors. And I’ll step in to read if the reader struggles too much. I used to grade the group based on the degree to which the actors acted-out the narration. I might continue that.
I also wanted to make sure the audience was attentive so I gave them an evaluation slip: “On a 5 point scale, how well did the actors act out the narration? Which line in particular did they act out well? Which line could they have done a better job acting out?” But I don’t know if this kind of evaluation from the audience was productive.
So, my question for the group is: how can we assess the efforts of the students in the audience to listen with the intent to understand during Reader’s Theater since during this activity the teacher isn’t up in front talking to students’ eyes?
Sean I am certainly no expert and I applaud your initiative here. The way I understand it is you are the one who directs the scene. You pull a page or less from the chapter book, some scene like the horses rode in and the hero jumped on the horse and rode away. The class makes the sound of the horses riding in because you ask them for that (direct it). The actor is invited by you, the director, to come up and jump on the horse and ride away. You read from the text and the words guide the action. That right there would take up to five minutes with repeats of the scene. This is the way I’ve seen Jason do it when modeling a scene from Isabella here in Denver for DPS teachers a few years ago. Maybe this will help:
https://benslavic.com/blog/rt-11/
Thanks for the link to the previous article there, Ben. I read through it, and after reading it I’m left with the impression that Reader’s Theater should be kept simple: only do it if a scene from the novel calls out to us, and let myself direct the actors and the class in L2 while reading through the scene. I’m envisioning Reader’s Theater happening as a smooth enhancement to an L2 discussion of the novel instead of some kind of, “OK, students. Now let’s do Reader’s Theater. Who wants to be the knight in shining armor?”
Thanks!
Sean, I think you’ve got it. There is one other way to use it. When I wrote my pirate story, I deliberately started in medias res with an execution scene. I have used that scene as a Readers Theatre piece to hook the students on the story. (Nothing like a bouncing pirate head to pique interest.)