Reader's Theater Podcast

Reader’s Theater is a strategy used to help students practice their oral reading fluency: for accuracy, procity, and intonation. A story is adapted into a script, like a short play, but students will not be acting the parts, they will be doing a dramatic reading of the selection. Selecting a story with several characters is important. Students feel it is “safer” to read aloud if they are in small groups. Since we know that many students do not enjoy Reading as a subject, this activity helps make reading a shared experience, while also making it more important to students.
(Ask other teachers, especially Resource, Speech. or Reading Specialist teachers if they have any Reader's Theater scripts available for you to borrow.)

1. Adapt the story into a script. You should have at least one narrator. All characters should speak at least once.
2. Break your class into small groups, enough so that everyone has a speaking part in the Reader’s Theater.
3. Allow the students to practice the script with their group, for about 10 – 20 minutes each day, for a week. Teacher can split practice sessions into 5-10 minute blocks to make it easier to manage or to fit into an already packed day.
4. Monitor each group’s progress, making sure students are reading dramatically and with fluency.
5. Groups will record their Reader’s Theater using Tool Factory Podcasting software, passing a microphone around to each character as the story progresses.
6. Groups may decide to make several recordings of their dramatic reading and select the one they think is best to upload to the class website.

Podcasts will be shared with the rest of the class, the school, parents, family, and friends online. Students without computers or internet access at home can burn the podcast on a CD-R to take home to share.