'Readers Theater' Teacher Training

March 6, 2014

I had an interesting time yesterday morning at the Junior High School in Miaoli instructing nine native EFL teachers how to prepare their students for a Readers Theater contest. Wayne, who is an agent for the publisher, picked us up at 9am and we drove an hour north on the highway. 
     When we got to the school, we were brought to the classroom where the in-service training would be held. One teacher set up the computer for the overhead projector. My wife had download and copied four samples of RT she had showed me of previous years’ winners in Taiwan. When the computer was set up, Leona  plugged in the flash drive. A-OK.
      The “How To” kits I asked the publisher to copy and distribute to the teachers in advance weren’t on hand so the assistant made additional copies of the four page booklets. The teachers hadn’t been able to see it to prepare for the workshop; later the copies that had been made but not provided were found. It wasn’t the publisher’s fault but someone at the school who dropped the ball.

      When the teachers came in to the room, I was ready. The publisher's agent gave me a folder about St. Patrick’s Day activities his company was promoting and asked me to introduce it. Leona stood in front of the room and introduced me in Mandarin. I didn’t see the bilingual biographical introduction I had given to her cousin, either. I acted as the publisher’s rep and talked up St. Patrick for five minutes. No one responded to my quip about Pat being the man who drove the snakes out of Ireland. I started the workshop.

      I introduced Readers' Theater by referring to the “How To” kit they’d distributed. I pointed out the scoring rubric and told the group they would be teams of judges for the three models I brought for them to see. I made an entry, introduction, script body, and exit team. I placed four t-charts on the green chalkboard, one for each team, good and bad for each of three models, showed them what to pay attention to while watching and asked them to take notes. Leona started showing the downloads. The first went well but the second and thirds had no audio. I described what they saw and told them they wouldn’t have understood what the children were saying anyway because they were talking too low and too fast and too much. After the last download, I asked each team to go to the board and write their observations. They did so. I went over the observations and pointed out the similar observations across teams.

      My next procedure was to ask each team to consider what they would recommend for their part in the Readers Theater process. I learned that there was one Readers Theater for the school, not one for each teacher. I gave them some tips and let them talk and prepare a short presentation about their ideals. Time was short, though; the room would be a lunch room at 11:50 am, so I cut the presentations short. They weren’t very verbose anyway. I gave a final ‘four session’ breakdown of how they should proceed with the children, four sessions depending on the time they had to prepare. I used my notes from the internet and put it on the board. The teachers copied it.

 It was the first time they had ever done Readers' Theater. I had done them a service. My main point to them was to have fun with the process with the children and not just the goal. Tell the children to speak slowly and not use too many words. One teacher asked if I would check their script and I offered to do so, assuming the publisher would compensate me for it. I gave her my IWW card (the only business card I had) and told them to contact me if they had any questions.