"Mucho Gusto" Reader's Theatre
- Jim Tripp
- Jan 11, 2016
- 2 min read
Eric Herman shares with us a short video of a Reader's Theatre with his elementary students. The stories were developed from the script Nice to Meet You.
(I highly suggest watching the video if for nothing else than to enjoy the class' humorous acting and superb use of props.)
One thing that pops out at me is how well his students are understanding the stories. It's obvious they've heard/read them as they are very responsive to the language being read. The story is also projected on the overhead.
Acting out the story in this way, Reader's Theatre style, is a great way to get more auditory CI flowing into your students ears in an enjoyable way. This is a culminating event, after many minutes, if not hours, of storyasking, reading, etc. The students's sense of success and accomplishment in having created such a unique and silly story, not to mention joy, is apparent.
Another point that I feel compelled to bring up after watching this video: We don't need to limit our stories to facts and details that come up in the script. In fact, we shouldn't limit the content of the story to what is written in the script. Doing so will cause us to recycle language less and risk suffocating creativity and imagery. While this is obvious to many seasoned TPRS teachers, I think it's important to reiterate.
Script - Nice to Meet You
By chance, Jonah meets Adrian Peterson at Buffalo Wild Wings. Jonah says to him, “Hi, my name is Jonah.” Adrian Peterson gets really nervous. He forgets his name. He says, “My name is T-T-T-Tony Danza.” Jonah says, “Nice to meet you Tony.”
Eric's class had worked with this simple script and in the process added a whole lot of color, literally. They tell us what the characters are wearing, where they work and what their job is, why they're nervous, and more. In other words, we get a richer story because students have more opportunity to co-create and continue to play with language that is already familiar to them. And when students (and teachers) have more opportunity to co-create and play, everyone wins.
You can find many more excellent videos from Eric Herman's classroom, as well as some of his informative articles and quality teaching resources, at his website
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