What has changed; the theater or the readers?

As we approach the final week of intensive reader's theater, I have taken a few moments to look around and marvel at the students. During our practice time the room buzzes with the energy of the students saying their lines with expression, adding movement, and helping one another with dramatic emphasis. The students are all engaged in the activity, and I observed almost all students contributing ideas to the group. Yesterday I stopped for a few minutes to just look around the room and compare what I saw to our first week of reader's theater. The major shift was the work and energy came from the students, rather than me, the teacher. My first week I felt like I was doing all of the work for all of the students. Now, I could have graded papers for thirty minutes while my students took charge of their work. The second major change I noticed was the confidence level of the students as they said their lines. Eyes were lifted from scripts, voices were strong and expression was meaningful as the student read their lines. My students have become performers.

As exciting as this change was to observe, I have to wonder about what has caused this shift. As we have progressed through our weeks of reader's theater, I am realizing how crucial the selection and the pre teaching has been. As I have gotten to know my students, and understood more about what they need to be successful in reader's theater, the scripts and mini-lessons have become more tailored to their needs. This leeds the students to be more engaged and more effective with their role.

My question now is: are the students "getting better" because I am choosing more appropriate material, and introducing it effectively? Or are my students "getting better" because they have had more opportunity to read out loud and increase their oral fluency skills and reading confidence?

"The Perfect Data Set" and Other Tall Tales

Our second set of Reader's Theater revolved around cowboy legends and tall tales. I found that there was quite a bit of similarity between the way that our cowboys streeeetched the truth and the way that I had to streeeetch, finnegle and otherwise modify my tidy little research plan that I had on paper to meet the realities of daily classroom life.

First, as I was collecting my all important pretest data, I dealt with numerous student absences which held me up with making sure this data was actually "pre". I found it absolutely impossible to find the time to administer the DIBELS test myself to each student, therefore I had to trust an aide to do it in exactly the same way I was. When I started to input these DIBELS numbers, I noticed the students that tested with one particular aide all had much higher scores then the rest of the class. Should I retest the whole group myself?? I can just imagine the speech to my class, "We will not be doing any math this week so that I can make sure there is consistency in my data collection." I stuck with the data that I have, but I think about my results, and the fact that after all this hard work the results may not be significant because my aide and I had different interpretations of how to administer the pre-test.

Second, I wrote in my tidy research plan that "we would practice and perform one reader's theater play each week for six weeks. Well, I didn't take into account that the last two weeks of work have included an 18 hour field trip to Sacramento followed by a "read-a-thon" day as we all recovered AND a week of minimum days to allow time for parent/teacher conferences, which left very little time for reader's theater. So, my one week plan very quickly stretched into two. I want to stay as accurate as I can with documenting and recording what is really happening in my classroom, so that I can authentically determine the causes of successes or failures in the reader's theater process. I am learning that part of this documentation process includes the realities of daily classroom life.

The shining light and major joy of this process is the "experimental treatment" itself. My fabulous student actors are starting to come out of their shells and embrace their time on stage. It has taken about three weeks to notice a tangible change, and there were many frustrating moments. I found that I had to do much more direct instruction and modeling than I had anticipated the students would need. However, the performance that the students gave of their tall tales yesterday showed poise, expression, and most importantly, fluency in their reading. One of my ELD students came shyly up to me right before the performance with his script in hand and pointed to the word "scaffold". It was the one word that he was still stuck on, so we practiced the short a sound together and drew a quick picture of a scaffold. He said the word perfectly in the performance.

"The Captain Horn": Our first week of Reader's Theater

All of the pre-test data has been gathered. The literature has been reviewed. The question has been asked:
Does reader's theater help students oral reading fluency and motivation to read?
Now is the time for action!!

Action for my project comes in the form of organizing, rehearsing and performing reader's theater. This, I have learned in the first week, is A LOT of action.

The first script that I chose aligned with our social studies unit on the Transcontinental Railroad. I chose to reenact the "Last Spike" ceremony, in which the very last piece of the first railroad across the country is finished. This script contained many vocabulary words, and names that were difficult to pronounce. I chose several of these words to teach explicitly, which helped tremendously in student comprehension. My procedure was as follows:

1. Preteach the context of the script.
2. Define Reader's Theater to my class.
3. Collectively come up with a set of "Reader's Theater" expectations for our class to follow during reader's theater time.
4. Pass out scripts and parts.
5. Students read lines to themselves 6 times, keeping track with tally marks.
6. 1st and second read through in a circle.
7. Next three practice read throughs blocking out movements and working on expression.
8. Make costumes.
9. Dress rehearsal.
10. Perform for fellow fourth grade classes.

Throughout the week the class vibe hovered between excited and out of control. It was a fine line for me to walk. On one hand, I was so pleased to see how energetic all the students were about the performance. On the other hand, some students used this moving and acting activity to go a little crazy. I was very happy that I had established guidelines with my students and could keep referring to these guidelines.

My students got extremely creative with their costumes. They devised the most intricate contraptions from construction paper and tape to use as the ties, rails and spikes in the ceremony. I realized that I might have to modify the costume process when I looked over at the recycling bin overflowing with half used construction paper bits.

One of the most important parts of reader's theater, according to the research, is the performance. This gives the students a chance to "feel like a star." I felt very proud watching my construction-paper-clad students reading out all the big words like "nitroglycerin" to the audience. My aide did burst my bubble a little after the show, when she chuckled about the student playing Theodore Judah who exclaimed how happy she was that she would no longer have to "go around Captain Horn again" to get from Boston to San Francisco. Ah well, we'll keep plugging away at the comprehension...

The community of Oakhurst

(left) The view on my morning commute.
Have you ever been to Oakhurst? Or, perhaps a better question would be, have you ever driven through Oakhurst? Millions of people have, and do, every day, on their way to America's favorite National Park; Yosemite. People from all over the world drive through Oakhurst every year, but if you were to ask them what they saw there, the answer would probably be, "We stopped at McDonalds for dinner," or "We went to the Raley's to stock up on supplies." For me, and the majority of other non-Oakhurstians, this town has been nothing more than a long strip of fast food joints and gas stations on Hwy. 41, the main artery from southern California to Yosemite.

In the past two months my perspective has changed dramatically. Rather than driving through, I have driven into the heart of Oakhurst every day and interacted with the residents as a teacher at the only elementary school in town. I realize that a pillar of conducting action research is understanding the context in which you are teaching, so I am devoting this post to documenting the community of Oakhurst.

When my principal was recruiting me, she told me, "We may look a little shabby on the outside, but we are fabulous on the inside." I would heartily agree with this statement. Below are pictures of the front of our campus and my lovely classroom.
As you can see, our campus is very old and falling apart. They have been working on a plan to rebuild for several years now, so no improvements are being made to the school. This is similar to town of Oakhurst (which is not technically a town.) It looks like one long strip mall. BUT, on the inside I have found a wealth of culture, diversity, and a caring community.

The major employers are Yosemite and Chuckchansi (the local casino.) Additionally, I have many blue collar families, employed as tatoo artists, car detailers, laudramat operators etc... Sports are a unifying force in community; from youth soccer to high school football, it seems that everyone participates in some way. There is also a thriving artist community, with may small studios and a local bookstore that sponsors poetry readings. As I have gotten to know people, I find that everyone stops to talk to one another. Even in the massive Raley's, I find that I always know someone to say hello to.

This sense of community amonst the residents transfers to the school. The teachers regularily get together after work and on weekends for hikes and excursions. The families all know one another, and all help out. There seems to always be a festival, car wash, bake sale, or other community event going on at the local park. AND I have discovered a biking and walking trail that connects our school to the local library, park, high school and natural creek.

All of this information will inform, and in some ways direct, my instruction. Inside my classroom I use music (see guitar below) and group projects (like my group magazine posters) to create the same sense of community. This is critical to my action research project because I want all students to feel comfortable to take risks in my classroom. The blue papers on my bulletin board below are notes that students have written me about how they are feeling in the classroom. I will also use those to continue to create a community of positive human relations and social justice.

A Whole New Year

Yesterday I introduced my first Reader's Theater. We are reading Charlotte's Web and I have taken a scene and adapted it for Reader's Theater. My smaller group of 14 fourth graders squealed and then gasped when they realized that someone would have to play the pig, and another the goose. I became quickly impatient with their concern over parts.
"You need to be happy with the part you are given and enjoy taking on each character." I said, or something to that effect. The squeals and commotion continued until I had distributed all of the roles and set them to practicing their lines quietly to themselves. Then I took a deep breath.

I have been researching a studying Reader's Theater and it's infinite possibilities for the past six months. As a former drama student myself, I love to bring drama to the classroom, and I see how it energizes a reading program. As I did further research into the topic, I also realized how critical this activity is in developing oral fluency and increasing student confidence in reading.

However, I have not been in a position to actually DO Reader's Theater in a classroom until now. Last year my husband and I moved to the Sierra Foothills, and I left my job as a second grade teacher. I did not have a job, and took a last minute long term sub job as a high school science teacher. Therefore, for the past year there has been somewhat of a rift between what I was researching for my MAT project and what I was doing on a daily basis in the classroom.

This year, however, my dreams came true and I became a fourth grade teacher. Now I could actually practice what I have been scheming for so long. I decided to ease myself into it by working with a smaller group during our intensive reading instruction time. Our school has a pull-out system, which divides up the class into three leveled reading groups for 45 minutes a day. Twelve of my students go to intensive reading instruction, and I am left with the 15 who are considered at grade level. So Reader's Theater should be no problem, right? Only 15 students, and those who are not struggling? Well, after my first day I am reminded that "teaching in theory" is veeeeery different than "teaching in practice."