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:
- 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.
- I read the paragraph out loud, with emotion.
- Students asked comprehension and vocabulary questions in Latin.
- I asked comprehension questions to ensure understanding
- We repeated steps 1-4 with each paragraph of the story.
- 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.
- I read the story and all were responsible for responding appropriately.
- 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:
- 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.
- I read the paragraph out loud, with emotion.
- Students asked comprehension and vocabulary questions in Latin.
- I asked comprehension questions to ensure understanding
- We repeated steps 1-4 with each paragraph of the story.
- 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.
- I read the story and all were responsible for responding appropriately.
- 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:
- 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)
- 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.
- Students were allowed to ask clarifying questions prior to acting it out.
- All students got up and acted while I stood in the back and told the story.
- 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.
-----------------------------
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!
