Explanation: 

The instructor selects text relevant to the day’s topic and assigns students in the class to read the text out loud. The text may be a short story, a passage, or a collection of statements. Depending on the length of the selected text and the size of the class all students may be assigned reading responsibilities or only a small fraction of the students may read out loud. If appropriate, the student readers may be encouraged to add drama, flair, or humor to their readings. This technique is particularly helpful for starting discussions, introducing new topics, or shifting gears during a long class period.

Background: 

The Reader’s Theatre technique is frequently used in elementary schools as an activity that encourages new readers to improve reading confidence, fluency, and comprehension. This flexible teaching technique is also used in high schools to develop performance skills and enhance literary studies.

Benefits: 

In an undergraduate science lecture, Reader’s Theatre is an efficient way to get many students' voices in the classroom and shift speaking responsibilities from the professor to the students. The technique can be useful for getting a variety of viewpoints onto the floor for discussion in a safe and/or efficient manner. For some topics, a traditional discussion of volunteers might be difficult to cultivate and/or not reveal the full spectrum of viewpoints because of limited student experiences, lack of knowledge in the field, the controversial nature of the topic, and/or homogeneous demographics. Reader’s Theater is efficient because the professor can construct a script with statements that illustrate the full spectrum of viewpoints, without requiring the class to spend the time to identify the spectrum. Similarly, for controversial topics Reader’s Theater can be a particularly safe method because it is obvious that the reader was assigned the task and is therefore not personally advocating or representing a controversial viewpoint.

It is also important to note that Reader’s Theatre is an effective method for encouraging participation, particularly from quiet students who may be shy and/or lack confidence in their own knowledge. Reading a short segment or statement is a relatively low-stakes activity where a quiet student’s voice can be heard and/or a student who lacks confidence can make a valuable contribution to the class.

Reader’s Theatre has benefits for its readers, but also promotes active listening by the non-readers. The instructor might preface the reading by giving specific instructions that require the non-readers to take notes, identify a stronger/weaker argument, identify an inaccuracy, categorize statements, etc. Given the many distractions inherent in today’s classrooms where students are easily lured away from learning by text messages and social media, Reader’s Theatre is a small way to encourage and demonstrate why focusing, note-taking, and/or careful listening are critical skills for success.

Examples & Variations: 

Reader’s Theater can be a particularly effective technique on the first day of class to demonstrate the expectation that most of the talking will be done by students. The statements selected might model suitable contributions as questions, evidence-based statements, etc. Alternately, the statements read during Reader’s Theater could exemplify a variety of strong and weak discussion contributions and students could then analyze which types of statements facilitated class discussion, which statements were less helpful, and/or how weak statements might be improved with the addition of logic, evidence, etc.

The instructor might also choose to shift responsibility for selecting the material read toward the students. For example, in a course focusing on clinical neuroscience, the instructor could assign some or all students to find a quote (or video) from a patient with a specific clinical condition that describes the symptoms from the patient’s perspective.