I’ve tried doing Reader’s Theatre with my class several times and it has always been a disaster. Some students don’t follow along with the script well enough so we have awkward pauses, breaks, or cues. Some students are so worried about saying their lines properly that they focus only on their own part and don’t really get a good experience of the whole work.
I wasn’t ready to throw out Reader’s Theatre but I knew that it didn’t work as well as it probably could. So I transformed Reader’s Theatre into Radio Theatre.
This is what I did.
After my students were familiar with the format of Radio Theatre, I let them know that we would be producing our own show.
I already had the class divided into four small reading groups and I regularly meet with each group twice a week. So in our groups, we sat down together and I guided them into collectively picking a topic, coming up with their own characters and writing a script. This took step took us two weeks.
So try it out!
Here are some OTR Websites that can help you get started.
http://www.archive.org/details/oldtimeradio
And don’t forget to check back here every Tuesday for great tips you can use in the classroom. There are now over 50 tips on the Teaching Tips page and they are easily organized by appearance and by theme. Teachers helping teachers is what this is all about.