Reader's Theater for Real-Life Mysteries (Grades 4-5)

A fun—and mysterious—way to introduce kids to oral interpretation! No costumes, no moving about the stage: just dramatic reading. Why practice this? Oral reading gives kids practice reading, learning control of nonverbal skills like tone, enunciation, engaging and audience, and more. Each book contains 8 fictional accounts of still unsolved, real-life mysteries (told creatively). Scripts are written for 6 students. Typically, 3 roles are available for each reading grade level. If needed, stronger readers could read more than one part (which gives them practice with voices and playing parts). For each of 8 readings (units), there will be a teacher lesson plan (with key vocabulary, the mystery's background, performance suggestions, and theories suggested to solve the mystery), characters (reading levels assigned to each part so you can match student to part easily). Then, each student identifies their character with badge art (to decorate and identify their character) and a script (copy one for each student). In addition to the theater script, give students a journal entry (to record students' theories of what occurred) and an activity assessment. Reproducible for classroom use. 113 pgs, pb.