Readers Theater

Just this past Tuesday we all got together for our weekly children's book club meeting. We discussed the first couple of chapters from the book The World According to Humphrey, by Betty G. Birney. As a group we wanted to really focus on how we would be able to use the book as a mentor text. Children can easily make a connection with the book by relating themselves to the characters. Whether it be a child not speaking up in class like Sayeh because of their accent or English speaking abilities to being like Raise-Your-Hand-Heidi.

We can use the book to:

Show the author's style- The author likes to have Humphrey speak a word three times every now and then like when he says,"SAD-SAD-SAD" or "SQUEAK-SQUEAK-SQUEAK." She also likes to sum up the chapter with a short tip about hamsters. We see the author using a lot of  humor as well. On page 30 of the text it says, Willy pointed to my potty corner, which I thought was unspeakably rude of him.  Little details like this will help the children to mimic and create a style for themselves during writing time. 

After discussing the book we decided to get into groups to create readers theater excerpts. Each group was assigned a chapter that we had already read, which then had to be text coded (laid out like a script with parts highlighted). Readers theater is a great way to get students engaged and to understand dialogue. It's also beneficial to English Language Learners since the readers theater creates more of a visual for them. It allows students to really see the emotions and characteristics of the characters from the book. We will be presenting these to the entire club next Tuesday and it's going to be so much fun! I'll let you know how they went!

We also got scholastic book order flyers!!! So exciting!!