Thursday 16 August 2012

Drama: Readers’ theatre


Readers’ theatre is a way of working collaboratively in order to interpret a story and present that interpretation to an audience. It includes more than reading, more than talking but brings together multiple modes in the dramatic form of group story telling (Ewing & Simons, 2004, p.83). In Readers’ theatre, with a script developed from a very familiar story students can focus on their voice, limited gestures and audience rather than other characters (Ewing as cited in Gibson& Ewing, 2011).

Today we did Readers theatre with the script of Mark and the wild things. We split our group into teams with 2 people playing Mark, the remaining team playing the rest of the voices in the script. We had to use our voices and body to portray the essence of the characters. Our tutor encouraged us to use our body language as well as voices to engage the audience with the characters we were playing.
 
                                                               
Mark and the Wild Things
 
(The two marks are sitting in the middle , the two people playing Marks’s mother are flanking the Marks’s on both sides, the rest are the wild things.)

Ideas for teaching

Reader’s theatre gives students a chance to read aloud for a purpose. It combines reading practice and performing. By using Readers theatre students can gain confidence in reading as it helps them to practice their reading skills in meaningful context (Ewing & Simons, 2004,p.83). With Readers’ theatre students infuse expression, fluency and comprehension to their reading and this helps them get more involved in the reading process.

References

Ewing. & Simons, J.(2004). Beyond the Script-drama in the class room. PETA:Newtown,Australia.
Gibson, R., & Ewing, R. (2011). Transforming the curriculum through the arts. Palgrave MacMillan: Melbourne

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MTeach - University of Sydney SID:420079626 Creative Arts Journal