Reader's Theater

Performing for Nursery and Kindergarten

Each year, I work with the kids who choose not to be part of the play to create a Readers' Theater.   Not only do I want the kids to have a low-stakes performance experience, I also want them to take ownership of the creation of the script.  First, the kids did a run through of a Reader's Theater based on the book The Great Fuzz Frenzy.  They used this script to come up with criteria for how they would choose a book for their Reader's Theater.  They decided that they wanted one that was funny; of interest to Early Childhood students (since they planned on presenting it to them); and  included good narrator and character roles.  After reading 12+ books, the kids chose the book Big Mean Mike by Michelle Knudsen and illustrated by Scott Magoon.

I divided the students into three groups and they each wrote a section of the script.  When they finished, we read through it to look for errors.  Once we had the script finalized,  we picked names out of a bowl to determine parts.  During this week of play rehearsals, we practiced our script multiple times and  performed it twice--once to Nursery and K and once to 3rd grade.  This year the kids wanted to make sure the audience could see the pictures in the book since a bunch of the humor relates to the illustrations.  So we projected the book on the screen during the presentations.  The audiences were fantastic and the Kindergarten liked it so well that they sparkled us with Gratitude Glitter!