Teaching Ideas and Units - Teaching Strategies

Readers theatre

What is it?

Readers theatre is a joint dramatic reading from a text, usually with no memorisation, no movement and a minimum of props.

What is its purpose?

It enables students to bring a text to life and together create a powerful interpretation. It offers less confident readers support from peers and provides a genuine social purpose for attentive reading. It also provides students with models for creating 'the voice behind the page' in their own silent reading.

Readers theatre can be used to introduce longer texts that students may then go on to read. In the same way that a television adaptation can push book sales through the roof, readers theatre can take students into the world of a text and entice them into enthusiastic reading.

How do I do it?

First an appropriate text is selected. Many narrative texts can be adapted for readers theatre. Picture books are often ideal and fun to use. For longer texts, several narrators can be allocated, characters can be assigned to students who read their speech, and longer descriptive passages that do not suit dramatic reading can be omitted. Alternatively, scripts are sometimes prepared specifically for readers theatre.

Susan Hill and Joelie Hancock suggest starting by demonstrating with repetitive picture books such as Hattie and the Fox by Mem Fox or Who Sank the Boat? by Pamela Allen. The teacher can start by reading the text through and then getting the students to join in with the dialogue or for alternate sentences to create a dramatic reading.

The degree of preparation depends on the expertise of the readers and the specific purpose of the reading. Some students like to include costume suggestions, music and other props.

How can I adapt it?

The whole class can work on the same text, or cooperative groups can work on different parts of a text. An alternative is to invite groups to select their own texts to present, from a collection of picture books or short stories. The performance can be just for the class or for other classes or audiences.

When using readers theatre to tune students into reading and studying a set text, a gripping segment from any part of the book can be chosen to work on, with a brief introduction by the teacher to set the scene.

How can it be used to evaluate students' language learning?

The teacher can observe students at work in preparing and presenting readers theatre to help them make assessments about how students:

• use linguistic structures and features of spoken text such as pause and emphasis
• adjust their speaking and listening to the demands of different situations
• interpret shades of meaning in written texts
• communicate with others in purposeful groups

For more information

Hill, Susan (1992) Readers Theatre: performing the text, Eleanor Curtain Publishing, Armadale.
Aaron Shepherd's Readers Theatre gives scripts that can be used for students in grades 3 to 9. They can be edited and printed for classroom use. Aaron Shepherd, who is a children's author, also gives some useful tips on how to make readers theatre work well in the classroom.
In her interview for this site, Carol Arnold describes how her prep students work together on readers theatre presentations to share their personal reading with the class.