Dokho Reflection 1

Dokho Reflection 1-Fluency with Reader’s Theatre

I found that my students were motivated and excited to do my reader’s theatre task.  Even Stacy (who is usually very shy) wanted to read out loud. My students were so eager to begin acting out the play that they didn’t want to take time to look for words that they didn’t recognize. I assured them that the play would go a lot smoother if we did the introduction activity. Because of the introduction activity, my students were very prepared to act out the play. All of my students participated the whole time; they thought it was just a fun activity instead of a lesson. By the last time that we acted out the play all of my students were reading the script smoothly and with little to no errors. They were also using the punctuation and their own imaginations to give their characters certain inflections and personalities. I feel that my lesson goals were met because the students did improve their fluency, learned new words, and read with more ease and confidence then usual.

A strength of my lesson is that it was fun and engaging. My students wanted to participate instead of me telling them that I had to participate. When an activity is entertaining for kids as well as educational they will be more willing to participate because it doesn’t feel like work. They may even learn more because they want to be performing to the best of their abilities. A limitation of my lesson is that I had to choose one reader’s theatre play that was appropriate for all three of my students. I don’t know if I was able to accomplish that. I felt that the play was at the right level for Stacy and Igor, but not challenging enough for Mary. I feel that Mary did not benefit or learn as much from the lesson because there were not many words that she didn’t recognize or need to decode. My solution to this problem would be to group a class of students based on fluency levels so that they are all reading the appropriate play and feel challenged but not overwhelmed.

As for myself, I noticed that I was also more motivated to do this lesson because I knew that the students would enjoy it and learn something. When I have my own classroom I have to make sure that I bring the same enthusiasm to every lesson so that my students will be excited too. I also have to remember that students do respond better to fun and there are ways to make things exciting and educational at the same time. It’s worth it even if it takes more effort. I wonder how this would work with an entire class. We could put on one big play or a bunch of smaller plays. I think it would be exciting to work on them for the whole year and then present them with props and costumes at the end of the class.