readerswithautism.com

By readers1 　http://readerswithautism.com/2009/08/intermezzo-reader%e2%80%99s-theater-and-the-reader-with-autism/

By Sara Finegan

The nuts and bolts of reading instruction often have not a lot to do with sustained reading of any kind, being really comprised of instruction and guided practice in some sort of comprehension or decoding strategy.  Kids who can’t read or can’t understand what they’re reading don’t get a lot of joy out of independent reading, so when we do include (as we always should) daily practice just reading, many readers with autism are stymied.

Some of my kids hover for the entire independent reading time in front of a bookshelf, unable to make a choice.  Others read the same book over and over, not because they understand it, but because it is familiar and may have some texturally or visually soothing quality.   Still others aren’t able to concentrate on the text, either due to visual tracking issues or attention deficit issues.  How, then, are they supposed to learn about the pure and utter joy and pleasure that reading can create?

Humorous scripts work best

One way is through reader’s theater.  Reader’s theater is the joint dramatic reading of text, usually from a script, often of a familiar story.  The best scripts to use in a classroom with kids of different learning abilities including autism are ones with a lot of humor.   (I know, I know.  Kids on the autism spectrum are supposed to be lacking in humor. I have yet to meet a single child with autism who fit into the “no sense of humor” box.   We may miss it; we may not get it, but it’s there.)

Funny reader’s theater scripts, ones involving fractured fairy tales, goofy giants, and other witty characters and dialogue, can provide our students with some of the most fun they’ve ever had in reading class.

Consider Jack. Jack hated, hated, hated, hated to read. His visual tracking difficulties made it hard for him to keep his eyes focused on an entire line or sentence.  We won’t even begin to discuss his attention deficit disorder.   He continued, in grade 5, to struggle with decoding skills.   He would become so easily overwhelmed by the task of reading that he would degenerate into a sobbing pool of misery.  And who needs that?  Not us.

Then we discovered the reader’s theater script “George the Giant.”  In a small reading group, we introduced the story to the kids, and assigned parts.  My aide took them out on the porch of our classroom and spent 30 minutes with them, practicing.  Inside, where I was working with some other youngsters on math skills, I heard rounds and rounds of laughter, squeaks, whistles, honking noises, and more laughter.  Someone was having a great time.

Idiotic, silly and absurd RULZ!

Turns out, it was Jack and all of the other kids. They took great delight in the script, which contained idiotic characters, silly sound effects, and an absurd plot.  They changed roles, worked on fluency and inflection, and had a great ol’ time.  Day after day for the next week, they begged to be allowed to do readers theater during reading class and any other free moment, and, of course, we let them.

When they got bored with George the Giant, I searched for other scripts.  I couldn’t find many at my kids’ reading level, so I wrote some of my own.  They could not get enough.  Jack learned to use funny accents and inflections to portray his role, and his reading fluency increased as he read and re-read each script.

What Jack learned from readers theater was that reading is fun, that characters actually sound like people, not his own stumbling decoder voice, and that stories have a lot inside of them, a lot more than words.   He continued to struggle with decoding and visual tracking in his book-reading.  He still dealt with frustration during reading practice. But readers theater gave him a respite from the work of reading and hours of endless enjoyment in the written word, an experience that was both academic and social.

There are some websites available that offer support for reader’s theater, but the best one I know is the website of Aaron Shepherd, a storyteller and storywriter who is beyond great and borders on genius.   His website, www.aaronshep.com, has several pages of terrific resources, including a series of wonderful readers theater scripts that make kids want to read.  I get no remuneration from recommending his site.   In fact, I haven’t communicated at all with Aaron, though I am going to shoot him an email letting him know that I’m posting a link to his site on this blog.

Related posts:

1. Reader with autism and figurative language, part 1
2. When a reader with autism needs to respond to literature…
3. Autism and hyperlexia, part 1: Anaphoric cuing?
4. Don’t stop advocating for the child with autism!
5. Intermezzo: A word about the spectrum