Reader's Theater/ Common Core Standard 3.RL.5

I LOVE 3 day weekends!  I feel so much more relaxed and productive at home when I'm not feeling the Sunday night "rat race" of looking through my kiddos backpacks and preparing for the week ahead. I love the idea of one more night off before the "race" begins.  I'm also looking forward to spending a  day with my daughter tomorrow. It's our Girls' Day Out.  With 3 brothers in the house, it seems as if sometimes we don't have enough Mother/Daughter time together.

Above is a pic of my Reader's Theater center in my classroom.  I wanted to make some changes to this center last summer, and I had purchased some finger puppets and a stage through Amazon.  I love the fluency that Reader's Theater works on, but I wanted to also use it to go over parts of a play.  In the past, my students would be assigned different plays.  We would spend one week talking about the parts of the play and looking over them. The next week they would spend reading the play and " oomphing up their dialogue".  Finally the boys and girls would spend time making their characters and the backgrounds.  Then they would present to the class.  They LOVED this!!  This year, I simply put Reader's Theater into one of my centers.  The students could select the play they wanted to do and pick their own parts.  There was no presenting of the play to the class and so forth.  I have to say that although I've made this center easier on myself this year, I don't like it this way for my students.  They are not getting as much out of it.  So... next year I think I will devise a happy medium.  One of the new items I'm going to implement that goes with Common Core Standard 3.RL.5 is after our discussion on the plays, having my students complete a "drama map" of the story.  This goes over important parts of the play.  Click on this link to get a free copy of the Drama Map: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Drama-Map-Map-of-important-parts-of-a-drama 
Also included is  a link to some free Reader's Theater plays from Teaching Heart.net. http://www.teachingheart.net/readerstheater.htm

I will be posting my first "Giveaway" tomorrow.  I  can't wait.  

Have a great Sunday evening!