With classrooms looking very different and shifting from didactic to authentic pedagogy, I decided to look into the standards that I am required to teach and create lessons that children will want to learn from. The move towards more small group collaboration has guided my ideas and led me to create a 6 day reader’s theater play to help practice second grade reading skills. There has been extensive research on the reader's theater process and why it has been so successful in schools to enhance students' fluency and confidence. Rasinski, Stokes, and Young experts in reader’s theater, have set up an instructional routine that allows students to practice fluency, comprehension, and word study in a way that children love doing (Rasinski, Stokes, and Young, 2017). Through the use of repetition, background creation, and acting, students are learning second grade reading standards while creating a fun production. These engaging lessons were inspired by Dr. Cope and Kalantzis as it is based on students interests, motivation and most importantly catered towards students needs.
This reader’s theater was newly designed by me in order to create collaborative assignments where students can create and hear the progress they are making as reader’s. The fluency process can be repetitive and isolated, so I thought if I took passages from “Learning A-Z,” I could turn this process into a fun group assignment that included the arts.I created six days of interactive lessons which progressively introduces a new concept while students apply and share knowledge with one another. At the end of each day, the students will get one step closer to having a final play that they will perform.
Illinois Standards:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.6
Acknowledge differences in the points of view of characters, including by speaking in a different voice for each character when reading dialogue aloud.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.2.4
Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.2.4.A
Read grade-level text with purpose and understanding.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.2.4.B
Read grade-level text orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression on successive readings.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.2.4.C
Use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.2.1.A
Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions (e.g., gaining the floor in respectful ways, listening to others with care, speaking one at a time about the topics and texts under discussion).
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.2.2
Recount or describe key ideas or details from a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.5
Describe the overall structure of a story, including describing how the beginning introduces the story and the ending concludes the action.
