Reader’s theater often creates a buzz of extra excitement for your students. But if they have not learned how to channel their excitement, it can lead to behavior problems. Before using a script, explain your expectations to students, model correct behaviors, and provide opportunities for students to practice correct behaviors in a controlled environment. You can observe and make notes to provide feedback during these times. Provide independent practice time for students to demonstrate correct behaviors.
For a student who has behavior problems, provide guidelines that explain the consequences of not behaving. Monitor the student’s success. Privately acknowledge the student’s accomplishment.
Several scenarios follow; each has its own set of potential behavior problems. In each case, you will want your students to understand what is expected of them and learn the indicated behaviors so that they can become good performers and respectful, cooperative listeners.
When working with a teacher-led group, students:
- meet quietly with the group
- practice listening to others as they read
- wait for their turn to read
- follow along while the script is being read
- follow instructions for what to do outside of the reading group
- ask for help when needed
In a rehearsal group, students:
- act responsibly when the teacher is not present
- know when it’s appropriate to help another student or make suggestions
- ask for help when needed
When not in a reading or rehearsal group, students:
- know the purpose and expectations for the activity, including standards of quality
- follow instructions for what to do when given seatwork or other activities
- know what supplies are needed, where to get them, and how to use them
- complete and turn in activity work
- clean up after an activity
- ask for help when needed
When part of an audience, students:
- demonstrate active listening
- stay silent during a performance
- give appropriate comments regarding the story, characters, and performance, using character names rather than the names of the performers
When performing, students:
- speak and act their parts
- are courteous while others are performing
- speak in a loud, clear voice using expression and fluency
- enunciate for understanding
- prompt others if necessary
- accept both criticism and praise appropriately
Read the 5-part Reader’s Theater Series:
- Reader’s Theater Day 1: Multiple Reading Opportunities
- Reader’s Theater Day 2: Echo-Reading
- Reader’s Theater Day 3: Choral Read and Table Read
- Reader’s Theater Day 4: Repeated Read/Rehearsal
- Reader’s Theater Day 5: Performance
At Benchmark Education, we are all passionate about building literacy.
So when asked to select 3 words that best describe Benchmark Education, our team got to work and our brainstorming resulted in the following wordle:
What do you think? Did we miss any words that you may have chosen to describe Benchmark Education? Share them here!
I have been working with schools lately regarding Guided Reading, and one principal asked me to put together a list of tips (basically reminders) for teachers who are implementing Guided Reading. Teachers were so grateful; I thought I might share it with others. Below is my list!
- Guided Reading is the heart of Reading Instruction. It is the time where students apply all the reading strategies taught throughout the literacy block.
- Students should be reading independently most of the time during Guided Reading, while teachers monitor and make notations of reading behaviors.
- An instructional leveled text is a text that students can read with 90% to 94% accuracy. Any percentage below that is frustrational level. Students reading 95% accuracy or higher are reading on an independent level.
- Running Records and observations of reading behaviors help teachers determine when students are ready to move to the next level.
- Running Records should be taken on leveled texts recently read in Guided Reading. Conducting Running Records on each student weekly allows the teacher to make necessary instructional decisions regularly.
- Students access fiction and nonfiction texts differently. Nonfiction is more difficult due to the text features such as captions, tables, graphs, maps, etc. Students need many opportunities for application of strategies with nonfiction.
- Selecting an appropriate leveled text plays a vital role in reading instruction. Teachers must determine the purpose or focus of the lesson based on the needs of students. Students’ needs are always first priority.
- For longer texts, teachers should give an introduction to the section of text being read that day. A discussion should always follow the reading in order to assess comprehension.
- Meeting with all reading groups daily is definitely ideal. However, that may not be possible. Schedule your groups throughout the week, making sure that struggling readers meet daily. Students on grade level could meet three times a week, while students above grade level could meet twice a week.
More on Guided Reading:
Every one of us recognizes the book introduction as a key aspect of the “before” reading component in guided reading. Imagine you are introducing Native Americans at the Time of the Explorers to a group of 3rd graders. You activate their schema about Native Americans, tapping into their prior knowledge and making connections to their life experiences. You frame it this way: “Tell me some things you know about Native Americans.” Their responses vary, most are on point, a few surprises! In other words, a typical beginning to your small-group lesson and one that starts your students on their journey of successful reading into the world of Native Americans. All is well, right?
These students most certainly are being set up for success in this reading, of this book, on this particular topic: Native Americans.
Could we be doing more for our students? Could we get more from these instructional minutes? I think so! And the answer lies in portable strategies, focusing on strategic moves successful readers make whenever they read.
The shift is small. In addition to the particular book and its theme or focus, what if we also considered the reading behaviors of successful readers at the strategy level? With this small shift in our thinking, changing our focus and language only slightly, we change the game significantly for our students.
Portable Strategies
Let’s keep our lesson and small group-text the same, Native Americans at the Time of the Explorers. We recognize that good readers think about what they know about a topic before they begin to read a book. With that consideration in mind, pinpointing a strategic behavior of successful readers, the book introduction to the same group of 3rd grade students now includes this language: “Good readers first identify the topic of the book they’re about to read and think about what they already know about that topic. So, I want you to practice this. Turn and tell the person sitting next to you something you know about the topic of this book, Native Americans.”
As you listen in, your immediate results are the same: most students giving ideas on point, a few surprises. The key difference is that you have reinforced for students the portable nature of the strategy—so that whether you, as a student, are in Mrs. Boyle’s English class or Mr. Pedryc’s social studies class, or Ms. Graham’s science class, you carry the strategy with you.
So, the more we include strategy instruction, the better equipped our students will be to engage in strategic reading behaviors.
You CAN take it with you is our message to students into every class, for success across the curriculum!
More on Guided Reading:
We just came across a fascinating editorial piece in Education Week that addresses the need for professional development as part of the new shift toward the common core standards.
The commentary, entitled Common-Core Work Must Include Teacher Development and written by Stephanie Hirsh, cleverly asserts that ”the dramatic shift in teaching prompted by the common core will require practical, intensive, and ongoing professional learning—not one-off “spray and pray” training that exposes everyone to the same material and hopes that some of it sticks.”
In addition, she reminds us that new technology resources make professional learning all the more accessible via shared learning platforms and “emerging tools such as classroom video capture, earbud coaching (in which teachers receive real-time coaching via an earpiece while they work), virtual classroom simulations, and online tutoring.”
Hirsh sites the state of Kentucky as one to watch — having recently claimed to be initiating improvements to professional development as part of the commitment to the common core standards.
What about your schools? As the 2013-14 school year approaches, (and it will be here before you know it) what is the buzz in your hallways about preparing staff for the shift to common core?
More Common Core topics:
- Common Core: Emphasis on Complex Text
- Using Genre to Teach Informational, Narrative and Persuasive Texts
