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Title
Multiple Teacher Roles in the Directing of a Reader’s Theater Course
Presenter
Nolan Weil
Intensive English Language Institute
Utah State University
Abstract:
Reader’s Theater is an approach to reading instruction that involves students in the dramatic rendering of a piece of literature, often a short story, although poems and other literary forms certainly could be a focus as well. In Reader’s Theater, students read aloud from scripts, and use their voices, facial expressions, and physical movements to dramatize the text.
As a form of reading instruction, Reader’s Theater is a motivating way to engage readers in repeated reading, which in turn provides opportunities to improve pronunciation, call attention to sound/spelling correspondence patterns, and word recognition, all of which tend to facilitate reading fluency, and lay a foundation for better comprehension.
The speaker will share insights based on his teaching of Reader’s Theater as a topics course in a university-based Intensive English Program. Reader’s Theater, as it has been described in the context of elementary language arts, does not advocate memorization of scripts, or extensive use of props, costumes, or stage sets; however, some limited use of these traditional theater elements can enhance the experience for readers and their audiences.
This talk will be framed in terms of the multiple roles of the teacher in collaboration with a diverse group of beginning and lower-intermediate level readers as, together, they staged a successful Reader’s Theater. The speaker will describe the course, and elaborate on the teacher’s roles as producer, director, scriptwriter, dialect coach, choreographer, and graphic designer to mention several. The speaker will discuss, and illustrate with practical examples from the course, the process of bringing the students along from a hesitant collection of script readers to a proud multi-national Reader’s Theater troupe.
Bio:
Nolan Weil is Assistant Professor of ESL at Utah State University (USU) where he teaches courses in academic reading, writing, and oral discourse, as well as various content-based topics courses. His most current projects revolve around various ways of using fiction texts to help beginning and intermediate adult readers develop better reading fluency.
contact asian_efl_journal@yahoo.com
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