Readers' Theatre

The design for Readers’ Theatre came about in the late 60’s in classrooms of Canada. Readers’ Theatre started in the classroom because many teachers observed students wanting to become characters they are reading about in the book. This is one reason we read to use our imagination. Students are drawn to Readers’ Theatre, because much of what they see is acting in our visual world. Students watch actors on television, these individuals are their role models. Drama in the classroom gives them a chance to become someone else, just like the individuals they see in the movies and TV shows. Many elementary students want to become actors when they grow up, well Readers’ Theatre gives them a chance to get started.

There are many purposes for using this technique. Many unconfident and beginning teache

Experts emphasize that using Readers’ Theatre as a teaching method is not the same thing as teaching theater. Theater is an art form which focuses on a product, a play production for an audience. Readers’ Theatre is informal and focuses on the process of dramatic performance for the sake of the learner, not an audience. Students are learning through drama. Charles Combs (1988) explains:

based; its objectives are manifold, but they are all directed toward

Dramatic activity is a useful way to begin a piece of literature or to generate ideas for writing. Drama can encourage students to explore, clarify, and elaborate feelings, attitudes, and ideas. Because drama requires students to organize, synthesize, and articulate their ideas, it provides an excellent opportunity for reflection and evaluation at the conclusion of a unit of study.

than aesthetics. Informal drama's goals are based in pedagogical,

rs use this teaching technique to bring student involvement into the classroom. It also develops students’ knowledge and enjoyment for scripted plays as a form of reading. Readers’ Theatre provides opportunities to students to talk and act out. Their oral reading in a play format will help them better understand the text and understand the characters by taking on the their characteristics and personality. Readers’ Theatre supplies students a chance to communicate meaning through their voice and have an audience interpret and understand the meaning behind the text. Readers’ Theatre, also, develops oral reading fluency and silent reading.

the growth and development of the participant rather than the

In dramatic activities, students use and examine their present knowledge in order to induce new knowledge. Bolton (1985) points out that while much school learning is an accruing of facts, Readers’ Theatre can help students reframe their knowledge into new perspectives. Dramatic activity is a way of exploring subject matter and its relationships to self and society, a way of "making personal meaning and sense of universal, abstract, social, moral, and ethical concepts through the concrete experience of the drama (Bolton, 1985).”

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