I really liked the idea of Reader’s Theatre to help build students’ fluency and understanding of a text. When doing a Reader’s Theatre students are assigned to read the narration and the dialogue for certain sections of the book. The focus of a Reader’s Theatre is for “students to read and re-read the script so that in the end, they will perform the reading with fluency, appropriate prosody, and a complete and thorough understanding of the text.” Students use “their scripts, and use their expression, intonation, rate and other prosodic features to convey the meaning of the story to audience members.” I think that this really holds students responsible for understanding the text and being able to convey the meaning strictly through their expression, etc.
The Sketch to Stretch strategy encourages non-verbal responses from students. Students select a scene or selection from the book and then they create an artistic impression that conveys their interpretation of it. Students must compose something that symbolizes the feeling or emotion that relates to that scene instead of an actual illustration or picture that is described in the text. Students then split into groups to share their sketches. I really like this because it makes students take a deeper look into the meaning of the scene and focus on how it makes them feel. I really like having them illustrate this instead of just writing it because it really gives the students a chance to be creative.
I feel that these activities would be really useful in the classroom and I feel that students would really enjoy completing these activities!
