Lesson Reflection

Before I taught this lesson I assumed that the students would have some knowledge about what a Reader’s Theater is; maybe they had learned about it in previous classes, or maybe they had performed one before. Once we began to fill out a KWL chart about Reader’s Theater, I quickly learned that they were beginners to this practice. This made me realize that I would need to spend more time helping them understand the concept before I would be able to move on to the next lesson. While we were filling out the ‘Know’ section of the chart, most of the students in the small group said that Reader’s Theater meant doing a play, where they dress up, and use parts. It became clear that they did not know that the play that they would act out, would be from a book they read. Because of their limited knowledge of Reader’s Theater, they had trouble filling out the ‘W’ section of the chart. It seemed that they didn’t know where to begin. I had to scaffold them a bit to come up with questions they had about it.

Once I began to show them a video of an actual Reader’s Theater, they became very engaged. They were all asking if they were going to get to perform. This interest helped them come to an understanding of what a Reader’s Theater actually was. We had a very easy time filling in the rest of the KWL chart. I was very surprised at how they connected the Reader’s Theater to different literacy practices they were familiar with. They noticed that the students sounded fluent while they were reading (it was smooth and at a good pace), and they also noticed the different expressions they used when saying different words. It was exciting to hear that they could apply literacy strategies they had learned in the past to something knew. Overall, they accomplished the objectives that I had set for this lesson.

If I were to teach this lesson again, I might show a short clip of the video before we would fill out the KWL chart. I think that by doing this it would help elicit more thoughts to add to what they know. I believe that my students knew more about Reader’s Theater than they said, but they just didn’t know what it was called. If they could have had a quick reminder about what it was, they would have been able to recall more details about the different elements of a Reader’s Theater.