Ep. 209: Readers' Theater: Easy, Effective, & FUN! with Chase Young

So basically , you got kids doing a play , but not really a play . They don't dress up , there's no props , they don't memorize their lines . The only thing that they're entertaining the audience with is their awesome voices . So it reminds me of Pitch Perfect , but we won't take that sidebar in this conversation . Okay , all right , yeah , we don't have the time .

I'm thinking timelines like what should I be thinking about if I'm wanting to implement this in my classroom ?

So on Monday , in preparation , we go through , you know , and find some scripts the best class dot org is my site where you can get a couple hundred of those and what you do is you just kind of look and say what would my students like and you pick enough scripts to match the number of students in your class .

So that way you're not all doing one script , you have small groups . It's like a small group , whole group activity , which is awesome because you are then free to work with those small groups throughout the week . So on Monday you have your scripts , you introduce them and the kids raise your hand to say , yep , that's the one I want to be in .

And that's how the groups are formed . It's essentially based on interest and in some cases , based on who wants to be with who . Whatever , who cares , as long as they're excited to do it , let them , you know , let them pair up in friendship .

So then on that Monday they kind of they take it home and they think about who they want to be and really it's about understanding the whole text itself , like getting an overall feel for it , the meaning , that kind of thing . And the next day they come in on Tuesday and they sit with their groups and they select their parts . So they pick their parts .

They don't get what they want and they cry and you know you'll . You give them a hug and tell them it's going to be okay and you do some rock paper scissors and you figure it all out . Now the first week is a little rough because it's new to them . But the beautiful part is , as they learn this framework , um , they get in that routine .

So the only thing that changes are the scripts , which is great , um , so they learn this routine and they realize that they don't always get what they want and that's just life . So on that Tuesday , once they select their parts , they focus on decoding and word recognition .

So they look at their own part and they just attempt to read it , maybe circle or underline words they don't know that they can work with the teacher on , and you kind of have to work them through that to build their automaticity . So we don't want them focusing on expression or anything else .

It's like let's learn how to read these words , okay , and that may take a while , you know . It may take some one-on-one work , it may take small group work at some other time maybe help at home , but then hopefully by Wednesday they at least know the words . So on Wednesday is when we start focusing on this automaticity and introduction to prosody .

So the expressive part of it so that expression is fun is because you are thinking about the meaning of the text . How am I supposed to read this ? What is the author's message ? What are they trying to convey ? So they truly have to have a good understanding and it's it's an indicator that they're comprehending if they're reading out loud , with good expression .

So you're coaching them using terms like hey , what if we read it like this ? And then eventually your students start to coach each other because they hear that so often . Um , so they're like hey , maybe we should read it like this .

Hey , I think he's really angry , let's do this super angry voice or whatever , and uh , so they work with each other , they work with you on Wednesday to get that expression going , and then on Thursday essentially is a practice performance where they stand up and you're listening and making sure everyone's going to be successful .

Because that's really the key , the key about reader seaters we want to make sure that they are going to stand up there and be awesome , because this is a confidence building and not only the skills that they're learning and developing , but it also builds confidence because they get to read aloud , with prosody and like a good reader , and some of these kids have

never done that before and that's what's wonderful about giving them support and practice throughout the week so that they then can be awesome when we come to Friday , which is the grand performance . That's when you invite everybody to come watch these , these thespians , thespians show off their reading skills and or , you know , you can take it on the road .

You go bust down classroom doors , like we're here to do , and you know they can't say no after you come in with that kind of enthusiasm .

It's really fun to plan these for walkthroughs , like for when you're administrators , because , honestly , you're just sitting in the back and all your kids sound great and they're having a good time and you clearly have done the work throughout the week , so that then you could just celebrate all that they learned .

So that's kind of a basic Monday through Friday framework , with a couple of things in between . You know , it's really good to send them home with their scripts so they can practice with somebody .

And , and you know , big tip number one is make extra copies , because they won't bring them back and you can either be really mad and frustrated every single day when they don't or you can just be like go to the folder .

I know you mentioned there might be other times where you might be pulling a small group and supporting , so of course it's going to be fluid , but just kind of for our listeners thinking I don't know , Chase , how long does this take each day ?

And I know five minutes because I always set the timer for five minutes , said read it , rehearse it as many times as you can within this , within five minutes , because scripts are going to be different in length , they'll finish at different times . They'll annoy you with what do I do now ? Instead , it's I just , you know , set the time and here it goes .

Now , if your scripts are a little bit longer , you know , maybe you need seven , eight minutes . It just really kind of depends . And a lot of teachers don't want to do reader's theater because the length of the scripts and then you got to sit and listen and they have to go over this . Well , here's a tip Don't pick long scripts , just don't do it .

I despised long strips as a reader , reader's theater advocate and researcher for over a decade . I didn't like them . I liked the shorter ones , the funny ones , the ones that had like a little twist . You know , that just really was for entertaining audiences .

Scary stories , I mean things that were not just like , hey , let's take um the three little pigs , for example , and we're going to and that's nice and that's lovely . That just wasn't my style .

I , I have it on my script or on my site and you can you can certainly download and use it , but it just I love the ones where they , the kids , couldn't wait for the audience to hear them , right Like the ones that were just like that , have like that weird twist at the end that's going to surprise everybody , or somebody who's going to yell at the end ,

or whatever . Like , like things where they're just like so antsy that they , they can't , their very existence is is just to perform every Friday , and so creating that kind of a culture and getting them that far engaged is really going to be up to you , the teacher out there , and your students . It's every every year is different , you know .

I mean , I remember one year I only had two girls in my class . There were a lot of scripts about gas .

Another thing I recommend as far as finding an audience is just pairing up with that awesome teacher friend that you want to talk to on Fridays all the time and just performing for each other while you sit in the back and figure out where you're going to go for happy hour .

So , yeah , if you just want to perform one on Halloween , don't expect some of the results that we're going to be talking about .

We can integrate vocabulary and word meanings and word parts and sentence structure and so much more .

So that is then extending the time that you're going to devote to it . Now , obviously , you'll be having , like vocabulary instruction and and different things , so it's covering the full gamut , but it is kind of centers around those scripts . So we do have that .

That article article came out in 2017 in the reading teacher and essentially it has the same fluency goals , but then it also has things you can do for vocabulary and then things you can do for making meaning each day as well .

I'm going to pick out some things that we thought you know , vocabulary or some syntax that we thought would be particularly tricky for kids , that we might stop and talk about with students , and then you can just react to it and tell us if we're on the right track .

Now it happened that he had to go and speak to the king and in order to make himself appear important , he said to the king we were thinking of vocabulary and morphology here and in order to make himself appear important .

So you see that word over and over and over again and we don't think kids know what a miller is . Most kids probably don't know what it is . But we did think they could tap into some of their morphology . Just knowing that ER at the end often does mean someone that does something . So it gives them a clue .

But we probably would still need to give them a little help with , well , what is a mill ? What does it mean for someone to do that ?

So we were thinking like maybe even showing them a picture of a mill so they could understand kind of what happens , that it's this big machine that grinds grain into flour , so they could kind of get a picture of , okay , this is what that person does , they operate this machine .

But then we also said like it's not so essential to the story for them to understand it Right , but it also is just repeated over and over that they might just feel better knowing what it is .

I mean any opportunity if you are going to extend with these , with these scripts , that absolutely you can look at your own scope and sequence , you can see how it aligns , you can look at your content areas , all of that to just kind of you know community , if you're studying the community or whatever you know , hundreds of years ago you had to have your Miller

, right . I mean , who could , who could go on without the Miller , you know ? So no , I think I think it's a great idea to just show them . These aren't just scripts , these are texts and we can use them for instructional purposes .

We already have them selected , they're already engaged with them , and and to know more and think deeper about them , I think is really the lovely side effect of spending time in text for a week .

You know , start with that baby framework where you just , hey , let's learn the words , let's learn how to read this expressively , we'll spend , spend a small amount of time because you know you're going to be trial and error with different scripts and and how and introducing your kids to cause . You know , the first week you've got some introverts .

You know , not everybody's like us and and you you kind of it takes them a minute . You know , I , I had , I had every year I started with a few introverts and I apologize for this , but they weren't anymore by the end first week .

It they may not want to participate and I give them that option and it's like , okay , well , if you'd rather just read independently or whatever , I can find you a text that you could read during this time . You know , every year a couple would start that way , but by the second week they were all in .

You know they had a blast , they were having fun and and again , you know , when it comes back to you're picking things for their interests , they're also integrating it in other ways , they're being successful , it's motivating , I mean , so there you go .

That may be like , okay , this is just a person . But yeah , if you're , if you're working on that morphology of ER or whatever that's , that's a perfect time . Like , I'm a teacher , this is a Miller , here's a mill , this is how it mills and and I think that's that's pretty much it .

You know , I love , I love some of the research that's coming out in small group instruction , where they're saying less is better , you know , and that right , there is a 30-second lesson .

If we're going to spend a week on this , we might choose something difficult and ideally something at grade level , um , so that those kids who get the support for the first time in their lives stand up and read something aloud on grade level , uh , and that's a wonderful way for you know , to meet that grade level expectation that we want them .

We want them in text that are grade level text . We want them in that , and this is one of the ways that you can get them there .

But the repetition is a huge scaffold here and we don't want to miss that opportunity with not supplying grade level text Like that would be . That's so important .

They want to be narrator one , they want to be Lysander , they want to be the wolf , they want to be all of these things , and it's truly because they know that they're going to get the support they need and then they can . They can prove to the other students that I am a great reader .

This again is the narrator one and we're going to focus on sentence structure here . By daybreak the king was already there and when he saw the gold he was really astonished and delighted . But his heart became only more greedy .

He had the Miller's daughter taken into another room full of straw , which was much larger , and commanded her to spend that also in one night if she valued her life . The girl knew not how to help herself and was crying when the door opened again and the little man appeared and said Three sentences .

Yeah , and I would imagine imagine I mean you talked about this might happen on what , like the third day or so that you're practicing , where you might point out to them those commas and how to pause and really work through that , because otherwise I could just see that not being read the way laurie just read it and just being read straight through .

So yeah , that can be explicitly taught easily , and what great example that's why we chose it .

So as soon as you found out that it didn't just make you good at one , you're like this is amazing , this is wonderful . And that was in the 70s . We started to see a lot more repeated readings . And then , of course , you know we're like OK , well , that's kind of boring , you know , let's add some authenticity .

Why would anyone you know repeatedly read something ? Nowadays you might have a script for a YouTube video and narrate over some sort of coyote walking around in the . You know , of course , one of the call centers speeches poetry , recitations and , of course , actors . So here comes Reader's Theater and the research is vast because you know it covers a lot .

Like we have research in gen ed , but we have research that supports it in special education classrooms . There was like four full classrooms that were involved in one of the studies that says that it worked with them . Emergent bilinguals have been studied . Title one classrooms have been studied . Reader's Theater has been studied in Taiwan .

It's from kindergarten to post-secondary . Reader's Theater was actually recently used to help um , uh , pronunciation and learning English in Taiwan . Uh , yeah , I mean there's a lot of crazy stuff out there , but I mean it goes to through . The bulk of the research is in elementary . Uh , there's some really good research in middle school too there's .

It's it's a little scant in high school but then it comes back into college classrooms . So we did a study actually in a high school classroom using scripted stories of reader theater and then we had a treatment versus control . The control essentially read the text and they answered the comprehension questions .

And then the other group did it as a , as a script , and that particular group , the reader seat or treatment group , significantly outperformed the control on the reading comprehension . Um , and that was really cool to see , um . So you know it's like , yeah , but that's kind of cheating . You know you have other support . I'm like , well , okay , well , what is ?

What is the goal ? Do you want your kids to understand the text , or is it to what ? It's not cheating , it's teaching . You know it's providing support , it's providing a scaffold so that your students can understand the grade level expectation tests . So so it's . It's . It's pretty amazing and in all of these different contexts and things .

They've found that it significantly improves word recognition automaticity , it significantly improves prosody , it significantly improves reading comprehension , it significantly improves attitude toward reading and in one study it was kind of like it was actually Poetry Academy , so they were performing poetry instead of scripts .

They found that , that Laurie Wilfong found that their attitude , their overall attitude towards school , had improved , just school in general , and that is certainly due to the fact that they are being successful , that they're actually succeeding and reading a grade level text and being good at it .

And you know , tim Brzezinski says that every kid should go home from school having read something successfully every day . And that's because I mean , if I was terrible at something , I wouldn't go do it every single day . You don't see me on the basketball court . I'm awful at that and I have the choice not to go , okay . But these kids they don't .

They have to go to school and they have to spend eight hours in different subjects , including , you know , language arts , reading , and they're not good at it and that's a problem . So that overall attitude starts to shift when they go to a place and they can excel and do what is expected .

So that's , you know , in general , the research that says it does a lot for a lot of things , a lot of different aspects of literacy .

The overall study we used the Gates-McGinnity reading test , pre and post , with a few hundred students , second graders , who were participating in Reader's Theater , and we had a control . And so the three subtests are decoding , word knowledge and reading comprehension . And when you look at the results the decoding andoding , word knowledge and reading comprehension .

And when you look at the results , the reading , the decoding and the reading and the word knowledge were pretty much the same in both groups , you know , except one group was doing reader's theater and the other one was doing whatever it is that they were doing .

And then in reading comprehension , the reader's theater group outperformed significantly the control group , and a lot of it is due to this active type , participating in literacy , being involved in it , rather than this passive literacy of where we're just letting it hit us a little bit . But we're actually on the offensive , you know , and that's cool .

So some other results we found from that one is we started just looking at gender differences and we saw that through an analysis that the boys had significantly outperformed the girls , or all three areas decoding , word , knowledge and comprehension and in the treatment group or in the control group , that gap remained from pre to post .

The boys were doing much , were not performing as well , but in the reader-seer treatment the gap was gone and in some cases they were outperforming , not significantly but just descriptively . And it was so cool . Our research team was like oh my gosh , we have found something to help boys , you know , participate more in literacy .

And it goes back to what you're saying , melissa . You know we , we didn't know why it was happening . So I you name , I primarily do numbers . So I'm a quantitative researcher but I was forced into qualitative because we had to figure out . We had to figure out why . What was about Reader's Theater that engaged the boys so well ?

And you know we interviewed I don't know it's like a hundred boys that participated on Reader's Theater and you know the primary thing was they . It was a novel activity . They didn't see it as reading . You know , we asked the kid and it's like does it make you a better reader ? Why , or why not ? And he was like no , because it's fun .

But yet , but yet you know , when you look at his growth , it's like you have made wonderful gains . And you know , and this one boy in particular , that I was observing , oh my gosh , you could tell that he was just . He would have been one of my favorites because it was a huge behavior problem and he was dying to be the big bad wolf , like dying .

He was on the floor like begging and I was like , please , teacher , give it to him , please give it to him , give it to him , you know . And he was selected despite his being under the chair and but he did so amazing . And there's actually research out there , uh , conducted on a reader's Theater in classrooms that have students with behavioral concerns .

So it is being used as like a warm-up activity in dyslexia at small groups and it's being used everywhere and just seeing that behavioral concerns just kind of diminished because we're leveraging the fact that these kids are going to be loud , they're going to be boisterous , they're going to be moving , they're going to be , you know just , and that's what we want ,

that's , that's absolutely what we want . These kids , kids were made for it , you know , we give them that opportunity to . You know , I couldn't sit down and read a book in my classroom when I was little . Well , you know , typically my teacher just made me pass out papers .

I don't know , I don't know why , but she loved me because I sat at her desk all the time . She loved me .

You know , and in order to reach all of the students and even those that aren't , you know , behavior concerns are still making gains too , in comprehension , in fluency , in attitude , motivation , confidence , all of these things .

And we started doing reader's theater and with grade level texts from some from your website , some other ones that I could find out there , just based on her interests . And then at some point I added some other informational texts and we started doing some partner reading , paragraph shrinking .

But I implemented that partner reading routine with the Reader's Theater scripts on grade First . We got the routines . We had so much fun and then we added on that layer of the paragraph shrinking to about six weeks in .

So six weeks of reader's theater and then six weeks additional with the paragraph shrinking and she went from 57 words per minute to 100 words uh , oral reading fluency in just like three months . And so this , I mean this works . You know , I mean , if you need , if you need to , to kind of think about that , that's huge .

I know that's a one-on-one situation , but it was not a long time . It was maybe 15 minutes a day , three times a week at the most . So , um , think about the power within a whole group of kids .

I mean you're free to move amongst those groups and if you identify a group that's really , really struggling then , yeah , you may want to find another time in during the day to just work with them all the way through those script you know , identify what , what , what those struggles are , and and try to remediate that so that they can have success on on

performance day .

And I think the same goes for repeated readings , like they just get better at what they're reading , but that that doesn their reading . And I think the same goes for repeated readings , like they just get better at what they're reading , but that doesn't translate .

You've already given many examples of where it does actually translate to other texts , but I'm just wondering , if I don't know if a teacher is hearing that from their principal or from another teacher , how would you say they should handle that situation or give them some more ammunition ? Should ?

For example , there's a little , there's a , there's a graph , and it shows a kid who their words correct per minute has increased throughout repeated readings and how their errors decrease . And then the next line is actually that same kid reading a more challenging text and you can see the words correct per minute starts higher and the errors start lower .

And they do this again and again and the same phenomenon occurs . Therefore , the repeated reading itself is helping them learn how to read . It's helping develop their fluency on other texts as well . Fluency in general . They're building their fluency . You can't , I mean think about it . Fluency in general , they're building their fluency .

You can't , I mean think about it . So I haven't read a text . Let's just say I haven't read this , my Quotable Kid book , right , that's sitting on this table . Am I going to have to practice it ? No , I'm a fluent reader . I am now fluent . I am fluent at almost any text you put in front of me , not the New England Journal of Medicine .

But I certainly there is that transfer effect . It's practice . It's , you know , practicing a trumpet , practicing driving , practicing cartwheels , you get better at it . In general you can do a cartwheel outside , inside on a trampoline . You know you don't have to repeatedly practice on the trampoline , then repeatedly practice on the floor .

You know , when we look at the research specifically on reader's theater , there's a lot of really solid work in that area , with rigorous methods with reliable results that say , hey , you know , we control for this , we control for this .

I mean , our study used something called propensity score matching where it's acceptable by what works , clearinghouse as a method to determine effectiveness of instructional strategies and it essentially matches treatment and control groups .

A person in this group you have a male that's in special education who is Title I Hispanic and scored this on the pretest , and it matches that to somebody in the control and if there's no match , it eliminates them . So it's our best attempt to mimic randomization and also make sure that we have apples to apples .

So there's a lot of solid research out there that says it works . It's not just people going , wow , you know , my kids really liked it and that's lovely , you know . But where I focus is impact , student impact . What are the outcomes ?

And when you see things working , then do it , especially something that's only five minutes , and then here's more ammunition for those teachers say you know what research is saying it's working in all of these different contexts . I'd like to at least test it out in my classroom .

I will do pre post and I will progress monitor it with you know curriculum based measurement or dibbles or whatever that you happen to use , and then I'll come back to you in six weeks . I would say give it six weeks and just see what the results are . Show that principle and if it's not working for them , great , do something else .

You know , maybe it's just that class . You know I w I would recommend doing an experiment on your own and and give it the time . Um , make sure you fidelity , structure support , uh , challenging texts . Again , they're probably not going to grow .

If you're going to be choosing , you know , um cat in the hat for your fifth graders , um , but so you know , with all of those elements in place , I just can't imagine you not seeing growth . And and another thing that Reader Cedar does , is it ? It has inherent accountability , like it may be the only time that they're actually reading something that day .

Yeah , I was really good at avoiding reading at school . I can make up beautiful responses . I just pick one sentence out and just make a wonderful personal connection and just fool that teacher where they're like in tears from my reflection and I didn't read a single thing , you know , but with Reader's Theater they have to .

You're not going to be like , oh gosh , this doesn't have chlorine in it , so I'm not going to be able to swim . You know you're going to be able to swim in the other bodies of water , whatever they might be . There might be different challenges , there might be some waves , there might be , I don't know , some mucky things .

I don't , I don't even like to think about it . Right , but you still know how to swim or grow Sandy bottle . Use what you know . Oh , I know so gross , I agree with you . But yeah , I mean , you still know how to swim and you can still apply those skills that you have . You don't lose them .

I think the thing that I think about is , like that's where the role of the teacher is so important , because that is where the teacher can help make that practice really , really good practice . Right , it needs to be accurate . We know that you said that was the first step .

We know that they need to be reading with expression to be able to show that they understand it . So that's where , like that , that teacher special stuff comes in and you're teaching that script so that then they can apply it .

Because if I'm doing the , you know a freestyle stroke and I'm just I'm just doing it and I don't know how to turn my head to get air appropriately , then in another body of water I'm going to probably struggle with that skill , right . So I have to make sure exactly it doesn't matter where .

So we have to make sure those things are firmed up in the original place so that we can then go transfer them . Um , and I , I like to think of it like perfect practice makes perfect .

I don't , I don't always love the idea of perfection , Like you know , but I think that , in terms of practice , if we're , if we're teaching freestyle incorrectly in a pool , it's not going to be done well anywhere else either . So you know , same with your basketball . You're not taught correctly how to do a layup .

You're not , you're just not going to be able to do it Doesn't matter the hoop , you know . So perfect practice makes perfect . That's where the teacher comes in , to make sure that the students are doing it to their very best and doing it with that accuracy and with that fluent reading that they need to be doing so that they can transfer it .

They're not going to be able to do it on their own . That's why you're there . So you know , don't don't expect them to just naturally fall into these groups and work through the , the , the five steps or whatever , and and and be successful .

And um , she said , oh , I went through , I found all the ones with the least amount of parts , cause it's just us or just our family , and I took printed all the fart ones and I was like great , she's like farts , boogers , they're all printed .