Drama and Reading Under Development

Drama and Reading

UNDER DEVELOPMENT AWAITING ADDITIONAL SOURCES FROM CLIENT]

Fostering Reading Motivation through Process Drama

Because good reading skills are an essential component of learning virtually all other subjects, it is not surprising that a great deal of attention has been paid to helping educators understand how and why children learn how to read. To date, a wide range of theories have been advanced to help foster reading motivation among young learners, with some methods being more effective than others. One method that has been shown to be effective in fostering reading motivation among young learners is process drama. This paper provides an overview of process drama and how teachers can use it to foster reading motivation among young learners today. A critical review of the relevant literature is used to identify effective techniques that can be used to implement process drama in the elementary and middle school classroom to help make reading more enjoyable to children and adolescents, as well as helping them see the value of reading in their lives and, ultimately, improve their reading skills.

Review and Discussion

Background and Overview.

One of the fundamental goals for achieving improving reading abilities is to help students achieve the level of expertise needed to develop decoding to the point where it becomes an automatic process that requires a minimum of attention. In this regard, Griffith and Rasinski (2004) report that, "When decoding and the other surface level aspects of reading are automatized, readers can devote a maximal amount of attention to the deeper levels of reading -- comprehension" (p. 126).

Discuss the problem of kids who can't read -- kids who can read but don't want to and possible reasons why-how teachers and parents have struggled to motivate kids to read and/or help them see its value -- why process drama might be the answer to these problems.

How Process Drama/Readers Theater is implemented.

Readers Theatre is a rehearsed group presentation of a script that is read aloud rather than memorized. No attempt is made to hide the scripts that the performers hold in folders or place on lecterns in front of them. Lines are distributed among individuals, pairs, small groups, and the whole group. The emphasis is on spoken words and gestures, not on staged action or blocking (the official theater term for stage movement)" (Flynn, 2004, p. 360).

How Process Drama Can Foster Reading Motivation.