Here is an inexpensive and accessible way to ramp up student participation and learning. Try using Readers Theatre in your classroom. You can adapt the following suggestions to any classroom from elementary through higher education.  

Why Readers Theatre?

• Increase student participation
• Reinforce learning in subject matter
• Help students develop language skills
• Develop student ability to present material in front of others
• Reinforce sense of group involvement and teamwork
• Give “Look at Me!” students a direction for their energy.
• Create easy-to-transport performances to other classes or local schools

What is Readers Theater?

Reader’s theater is an approach that blends reading practice and performing. One objective is to enrich students’ reading skills and confidence by having them practice reading with a purpose. Reader’s theater gives students a real reason to read aloud.

Another objective for Readers Theatre can be to bring subjects that some students find dull to life. Through reading parts, students can experience the reality of historical or scientific events. (Find quote from someone who had used readers theater in biology). Also Lori Myers on the environment.

How do you create Readers Theatre?

Using Fiction:

• Students take any narrative text and a narrator is assigned the prose description. Other students are assigned the character roles and read the dialogue. Usually they do so without costumes or props.
• In choosing books or stories to be done as Readers Theater, pick books that have a good ratio of dialogue to description. Also, choose texts that require emotional expression.

Using Plays:

• Plays are more easily adaptable to Readers Theatre. A student may be assigned the stage directions and other students assigned to the characters.

Using Readers Theatre Scripts:

It is possible to find scripts that are designed for Readers Theater. In this case, a short story, novel, or play is redesigned with this format in mind. A narrator is specified and the characters are designated as they would be in a play script.

• Narrator:  Joey’s bedroom is a maze of wires hooking computers and tablets to modems, robots, and projectors of various kinds. Joey, at first, cannot be seen. He is hiding under a pile of bedspreads, clothes, and fast food wrappers. There is a knock on the door.
• Scooter: Hey, Joey. You in there?
• Joey: Mmmmmph.
• Narrator: Joey throws off the layers, looks around the room, then dives under the bed. The door opens slowly.

Creating Them Yourself

Using the above format, you can turn any of the works you now use into scripts that are easily read by the students.

For Elementary Students

• Make the students part of the project by allowing them to contribute to its development.
• Keep the segments short: 10 – 15 minutes.
• Work from a photo, a cartoon or a video clip
• Devise mini plays based on recognizable characters from films or cartoons the students like.
• Choose characters the students know and allow students to invent their own brief dialogues based on the roles. Compile  their suggestions and work on a class script. 

For Middle School  and High School

• Allow students to participate in the process and create their own scripts around a topic of choice.
• Choose a an existing play or plays to perform as a class project. Allow students to participate in the script development, the “staging,” and the performance.
• Assign different scenes to groups of students who can then develop a group “production” to be performed sequentially in front of the class. Discuss various interpretations of the material.

How do you produce Readers Theatre?

Remember that Readers Theatre just means that the actors have scripts in their hands. Other than that, you can be as elaborate as you like in your production, depending on your space and time. Perfomances can range from

• Placing students/actors in chairs in front of the class/audience
• Having students in chairs but rising when they are in a scene and sitting when they are not.
• Adding props or costume items (a hat, an apron, a shovel) that can be handled without interfering with the students’ ability to read their scripts
• Actually staging the show in front of a class/audience with blocking and movement and possibly some stage pieces like a chair or a desk.  This is much more elaborate and takes more rehearsal but it simulates a production fairly accurately.

Where do you find Readers Theatre Scripts?

Although you can use a novel or story in the format in which it’s written, it’s often easier for students to read following a script written as a script. So, where do you find that?

• You can make your own, following the format shown above.
• Choose books or topics that have characters with dialogue
• Google Readers Theatre (or Theater) Scripts. There are many both for sale and free on the Internet.
• Choose a play that fits your students’ interests and needs. Simply assign one student to read the stage directions.

Subjects suitable to Readers Theatre

Language Arts, Reading, and English are all subjects for which Readers Theatre is a viable option. However, there are others in which that format can bring concepts and facts alive for contemporary students. For anyone over the age of 50, it is astounding that students in 2019 are stumped by references to the Holocaust, John F. Kennedy, and telephone operators.  

History and Political Science

Let students feel what it was like to live in a different generation or ethnicity, to understand past controversies or how our legal system operates. A play like Oregon Fever by David Rush simulates the life and romance of a young person caught up by the gold rush. She’ll Find Her Way Home by Valletta Anderson reveals the inner workings of a family of color shortly after the Civil war. Inherit the Wind makes the debate over Darwin and Creationism come to life.

Science

There are dramas that raise questions about ethics and provide insight into the role of scientists. You can find an annotated list of math- and science-related plays at Curtain Up, The Internet Theater Magazine of Reviews, Features, Annotated Listings.