Readers Theater & Science

Due to the era of high-stakes testing elementary classrooms focus on reading in hopes to improve reading scores and achievement.  This often means that there is little or no time left for Science content.  Unfortunately, when these students enter upper elementary or middle school they are incapable of comprehending the academic vocabulary presented in science textbooks.   So we need to get creative to make sure our students have multiple science learning experiences before they approach older grades!
In a previous post I blogged about using children’s literature as a way to teach students about Science.  Another fun, creative, and well researched way to incorporate science is through Readers Theater.  What is Readers Theater? Students are given or if old enough write a script pertaining to specific content or concept.  When using Readers Theater strictly to improve fluency the script can be about anything and is written like a play, but when using R.T. to develop academic science vocabulary the script needs to have a specific focus building off of the science content your intending to teach.  Each student is assigned a role and the actors practice multiple times to prepare for a performance.  Students do not need to memorize the script, use props of costumes.  The point is to get students to participate in repeated readings of the script.   R.T. is well researched and is proven to improve reader's fluency, which is important at all grade levels. 
The article that inspired this post is titled Building Reading Fluency in Elementary Science through Readers Theater written by Leah Kinniburgh and Edward Shaw Jr. published in Science Activities, Spring2007, Vol. 44 Issue 1.  They suggested that when preparing to use Readers Theater for science the teacher needs to create an original script or if the students are old enough they can create the script themselves.  Use science textbooks and trade books to write the script and go into detail describing the academic science vocabulary.  The article provided an example of a science Readers Theater script, which included narrators and multiple mineral detectives.  If you decide to use this activity it's also important to include some type of assessment.  The article provided an example rubric to reference while creating your own.   Remember that we want students to have a deep and authentic understanding of what they are reading so extension activities or preparations may be needed to provide students with concrete experiences before having them read, which is more abstract.