Activity: Reader's Theatre

Today I tried to do an activity that I am, self admittedly, no good at: Reader's Theatre.

There are various ways of doing it and it is something I think can be an incredible tool for both students and teachers, so I decided to commit to it and try it in 4 of my 6 classes: two Latin IIs and two Latin IIIs. 

I used three different processes which I will lay out in this post and I will also discuss what worked and what didn't. 

Process One 

Completed with 1 Latin II class

What I did:

1. Students were given an embedded reading from our curriculum. It focused on four new words (most of which I'd already circled repeatedly with students). Students read a paragraph silently.
2. I read the paragraph out loud, with emotion.
3. Students asked comprehension and vocabulary questions in Latin.
4. I asked comprehension questions to ensure understanding
5. We repeated steps 1-4 with each paragraph of the story.
6. Once we finished the story, three students I'd asked to play certain characters came up. The class divided the rest of the parts (hospites, Romani, Britanni) in groups and I was the king/narrator. 
7. I read the story and all were responsible for responding appropriately. 
8. Students completed a time write on the story.

What worked:

• By asking students to act certain parts out prior, they were able to focus on what they should do, and there wasn't any chaos when I presented the theatre part of the activity. I was also able to choose students I knew would take it seriously
• I was able to quickly gauge student understanding by their reactions. Since we were doing it as theatre, reactions were quick, almost simultaneous with my reading. I attribute this to the reading and discussion we'd done prior. 
• Students got multiple forms of experience with the story. there was a visual, auditory, and kinesthetic aspect to our activity.

What didn't work:

• This may not have been the best story to do. It was a great story to test comprehension this way, but not a lot of action, so I feel like the students felt jilted. Fortunately, tomorrow, there will be a more exciting story as a follow up.

Process Two

Completed with 1 Latin II class

What I did:

1. Students were given an embedded reading from our curriculum. It focused on four new words (most of which I'd already circled repeatedly with students). Students read a paragraph silently.
2. I read the paragraph out loud, with emotion.
3. Students asked comprehension and vocabulary questions in Latin.
4. I asked comprehension questions to ensure understanding
5. We repeated steps 1-4 with each paragraph of the story.
6. Once we finished the story, I asked students for volunteers to play essential characters. The rest of the class divided the rest of the parts (hospites, Romani, Britanni) in groups and I was the king/narrator. 
7. I read the story and all were responsible for responding appropriately. 
8. Students completed a time write on the story.

What worked:

• As with before, it was easy to tell who understood and who didn't. I was able to quickly evaluate the skills of the class and see if extra practice was needed
• Students reported that they felt confident in the story and were able to write about it. 

What didn't work:

• I am not sure this class was fully confident to volunteer. I did get my volunteers, but only reluctantly. This changed however, after we started acting it out. They got comfortable and enjoyed it
• This class was less excited about acting it out and it showed in some of their reactions. I may reserve RT for this class only when the story is exciting and elicits exciting responses. 

Process Three

Completed with 2 Latin III classes

What I did:

1. I told students upfront about the reader's theatre activity and asked for volunteers at the beginning of the class. Students who did not volunteer for a specific role were given a general role (birds in this case)
2. We reviewed our TPRS story yesterday about Romulus and Remus and finished it today with Remus' death and the Sabine War (a VERY shortened version of it, just the basics). I showed pieces of artwork and asked students to tell me the story piece by piece.
3. Students were allowed to ask clarifying questions prior to acting it out.
4. All students got up and acted while I stood in the back and told the story. 
5. Students completed a timed write on the story. Since this was an upper level class, I asked them to consider the perspectives of Romulus and Remus during their fight and to pick one brother to support in their writing. 

What worked:

• Students REALLY got into it. Even the ones not usually excited about participating had no complaints. 
• Students said they felt very prepared to do a timed write after having so many forms of input: me telling the story, discussion of the story, artwork to look at, and Reader's Theatre.
• Again, I was able to quickly determine level of understanding by watching the students. 

What didn't work:

• There was a bit of chaos. Students responded appropriately, but there was a bit of goofing off. I feel as though it took away from the overall performance, but comprehension did not suffer and students enjoyed themselves.

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I believe I will do this again. I enjoyed this and now, having done it a few different ways, I feel more confident in my ability to pull it off. I don't know that I would say that I would get rid of any of these processes, but I may slightly change how I do things from class to class depending on the students and the chemistry. Tomorrow I am planning on doing something similar with my I classes where they act out different vocabulary words. Not necessarily related to a story, but the same concept. I will post a follow up with my observations then.

Happy acting!