Readers theater combines social studies, reading, oral comprehension, writing and public speaking skills. It allows students to create dialogues about historical events and issues to engage with the topics in an entertaining way rather than just lists of facts. Students read in groups, with support for struggling readers. The audience works on oral comprehension by listening without visuals. Older students can write their own scripts, practicing collaboration and writing skills. Performing in front of others improves public speaking abilities. Interactive notebooks provide a creative space for notes, journals, and other activities to engage with social studies content through reading and writing. Timelines and time capsules give students opportunities to write about sequences of events and reflect on changes over time.
2. READERS THEATER
Social Studies combined with readers theater
allows student’s skills in social studies, reading,
oral comprehension, writing, and public
speaking come together and improve in one
beneficial and engaging activity.
3. SOCIAL STUDIES
CONNECTION
It is possible to connect social studies to readers
theater in many different ways.
• Creating dialogue in order to talk about important
issues, such as taking care of the earth.
• Using dialogue in order to gain insight to a piece of
history. This can be done by taking a story or a
lesson in history and creating a story using
dialogue that contains key details and events, in a
way that is entertaining.
• Using dialogue to showcase an important event in
a way that is engaging to students- this is done
without as much focus on a list of dates and times,
but instead focuses on the STORY in history.
4. READING CONNECTION
Readers Theater allows students to read in teams or
groups in front of their peers.
To benefit the students it is important that the
reading be at their level and lower readers have a
chance to work in larger groups, that way they don’t
feel as much pressure to perform the majority of the
time like a group of two would.
5. ORAL COMPREHENSION
The audience will be listening to the story as the
players read the dialogue in their scripts.
Students in the audience will have a chance to work
on their skills of oral comprehension because there
will be few to no pictures and the players won’t be
acting out scenes.
The audience will work on creating their own imagery
in their brains (making pictures in our brains is what
I call it to my first graders). This helps them
comprehend the story orally and gain information
from it.
6. WRITING CONNECTION
In older grades there is a greater possibility in
students writing their own scripts for their readers
theater presentation.
After gaining information students can use the
information they have learned in order to pen their
own dialogue. This allows them to practice their
writing and work as a team or a partnership because
it is important that the lines of each character match
the lines of another.
7. PUBLIC SPEAKING
The students perform their production in front of an
audience of either their peers, their parents, or both.
This allows students to practice their skills in
speaking in front of an audience in order to improve
on projection and flow in their reading and speaking.
8. HISTORICAL JOURNALING
By giving students the opportunity to journal as a
figure in history we provide them with the chance
to learn things from their own writing that they
may not have learned in the traditional way of
teaching and learning history.
In order to gain inspiration
it is also possible to allow students with the chance
to read from historical journals (or fictional
counterparts such as “My America” or “I
Survived…” books).
9. HISTORICAL CONNECTION
By taking a piece of time and allowing children to
write about it as if they were there gives them
opportunities to learn about it more deeply.
If a child was given the task of writing from the
perspective of a child venturing west on the Oregon
Trail with his/her family the student would need to
first learn about what it was like to be a child on the
Oregon Trail.
Likewise if an older student was given the task of
writing from the point of view of Martin Luther King
Jr., Harriet Tubman, or President Abraham Lincoln it
would be essential that they learn about these figures
in history in order to write these journal entries.
10. READING AND WRITING
CONNECTION
While journaling is indeed a writing activity the type
of writing is important to note. Because this is an
activity that requires them to write from a historical
perspective the students need to write a narrative
from the perspective of another.
As far as reading goes I mentioned before students
could get inspiration from books that depict journals
or personal narratives of children living at the time or
older students could read and look at actual journal
entries from the time. This along with other reading
materials will help give them enough information to
write their own journal entries.
11. INTERACTIVE
NOTEBOOKS
Interactive notebooks allow students to be creative
while they take notes and they can become
independent writers and thinkers. This is a space
where students can write their own thoughts and take
notes, and creatively think through information they
receive during class.
12. CONTENT AREA
CONNECTIONS
Interactive notebooks are being used in classrooms for
a variety of subjects from writing, to science, to social
studies. Not only do they provide engaging writing
and note-taking activities but they also help students
with organization and journaling.
There are many different ways to incorporate social
studies into an interactive notebook from basic notes,
journal entries, to diagrams, charts, and maps.
13. READING AND WRITING
CONNECTIONS
Interactive notebooks allow students to have the
opportunity to work closely with reading and writing
strategies.
• Basic Note Taking strategies
• Strategies to explore vocabulary or a space to write
and define new vocabulary words.
• Journal pages
• Graphic Organizers
14. TIME LINES
Time lines allow for students to see a sequence of
events. While it does have some focus on when events
happened in the past it can be a great opportunity for
students to write small blurbs about a point in time.
15. SOCIAL STUDIES
CONNECTIONS
Timelines are typically connected closely with
history because they show a sequence of events.
Timelines can be used to document the lives of
the students in class, events happening in class,
or current events happening in the school, town,
state, or country depending on the age being
taught.
16. LITERACY CONNECTIONS
The use of timelines to connect literacy and
social studies allows students to work on writing
short blurbs about a specific piece of time.
Timelines also create a sequence and allow
students to learn about a sequence of events and
can even be used as a chance to teach and really
look into cause and effect relationships in the
timeline.
17. TIME CAPSULES
This is a piece of personal history for the
students in the class. This was something my
second grade teacher did every year and still
does with her class to this day.
18. SOCIAL STUDIES
CONNECTION
This is a piece of personal history for the students
who create their own time-capsule to open at the end
of the year.
The time capsules give students a chance to look back
on their own history and experiences (even if just for a
year) for young students it is important that they can
create and understand a simple timeline of events. I
know some teachers who collect student worth
throughout the year and put it in a book for students
to look at and talk about before taking it home.
19. LITERACY CONNECTION
For all ages (younger grades may need the help of you
or a parent) they can write a few things on a piece of
paper (favorite color, favorite food, favorite animal,
etc.) at the beginning of the school year. For
kindergarten and first grade students you could even
put in their first writing of the ABC’s or the first
sentence they read in the year.
At the end of the year when it is opened again and the
students get a chance to look at the things in their
time capsule they can write about how they have
changed (either academically, physically, or in their
favorite whatever's).
