Reader's Theater Fun

Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month

This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.

I teach second grade in California. The school that I teach at is in a low-income and high-needs area. My students love learning and work very hard to succeed. Unfortunately, we continue to struggle in reading comprehension and fluency. This is largely due to our English Learner population, over 80% of the students in my class speak English as a second language.

In order for students to understand the meaning of the text, they must be able to read fluently. Sounds simple, right? It is not so simple if a student struggles with decoding and can't recognize high frequency words. The best way to improve reading fluency is with practice. We read whatever we can, whenever we can, as much as we can. I am constantly looking for ways to keep reading fun. One way to keep students engaged in reading aloud is with Reader's Theater.

Reader's Theater will allow my students to put on mini-plays every week! With Reader's Theater, students read from a script and the reading parts are divided among the readers. My students can be put in groups based on ability, allowing me to focus on each groups individual needs (expression, decoding, sight words, etc.). Or the students can be grouped heterogeneously, with each group having all ability levels, this will allow me to focus on comprehension. Reader's Theater is a fun, no-stress way for children to preform. They do not have to memorize their lines, in fact, they get to hold their scripts. The dramatic puppet stage is another way to build on the Reader's Theater scripts and create a motivational factor for the students. During our independent workshop time, the students can read and work together to comprehend their play. When they have shown me that they understand the story, they can create puppets and present their puppet show to the class!

My students have the odds stacked against them. They struggle with the English language, often their parents are unable to help them, and every year, they enter their new grade below grade level. With Reader's Theater, they will have countless opportunities to read aloud, improve fluency, and work on comprehension skills. My students need every chance they can get to improve. Please help us to be the best readers we can be!