Reader's Theater

Whew! Where has the time gone?? It's already almost MID-MARKING PERIOD! I'm having so much fun with my kiddos this year. Every year that I teach using TPR, TPRS, and CI, I find new, exciting activities for my students. I update how I did things in the past and add or subtract as necessary. So far the best part of the year is that I FINALLY have a solid foundation of the curriculum, so I'm not reinventing the wheel each and every evening as a I plan. I can finally pull activities and use the rest of my (spare!) time to create new things.

One thing I decided to try this year was to do a Reader's Theater with only part of a text. I'm so used to having actors for the entire story, but on this particular day, I just didn't see the purpose for the first paragraph of the story.

I was teaching the first story "Cerberus" from the Cambridge Latin Series Stage 1 book.  I had already told two TPRS stories using TPR vocabulary and vocabulary from the Circling with Balls, so the students were familiar with appropriate story behavior. I read and circled the first paragraph to the students to set up the Reader's Theater. I circled heavily to ensure comprehension. Then, I put 4 carpet squares on the ground with a plate of fake food on top to serve as our table (mensa in Latin). I "hired" two gregarious students to act as the dog (canis) and the cook (coquus). The actors and audience had a ball. I circled what the actors were doing and directed the actors. On this day, I was missing about 7 students due to a class meeting, so I had the actors reprise their roles the next day. This was great because the majority of the class enjoyed a fun repetition, while the students who had missed were able to understand the story.

I really enjoyed doing the Reader's Theater with only about 8 sentences because it held the students' and actors' attention. Too often the actors get bored with background information or the audience spends too much time waiting for action. This paragraph was action-packed and perfect for a Reader's Theater. Total time, including set-up: 15 minutes. After the acting session, I again summarized for the students and finally, we read the paragraph in the book. The students were pleased by how easy it was!! Here are some pictures of my two awesome actors: