We just finished our readers’ theater competition today. It is not a surprise to me that the groups who enjoyed the most were rewarded the best. There are some deciding factors that facilitate their performance in my opinion. 

First, an appropriate script that the students can relate plays an important role. Amongst the better performing classes, most of them are able to understand the story being read to them, they are able to create their own imagination from the pictures shown to them, they are able to find interesting points in the story that make them laugh, mad or sad. 

Second, albeit different aptitudes and personalities of the students, the better performing classes are more able to play with the rhythm and intonations of English. There was a lot of valuable discussion when we went through the scripts and tried different ways to express the scripts. To me, it felt like practicing choir, trying to come up with a better combination to make parts of the story vivid, fun and enchanting. As the class went through different combinations, I could feel that the students were able to experience the impact resulted from different combinations. They enjoyed the experiments and making their own decisions. 

In the EFL environment, there are very few opportunities for learners to express themselves in English. We have struggled with elementary learners working on their textbook sentence structures and dialogues for years. To be honest, it feels fake because there is hardly real recipient to initiate a communication. And the readers’ theater makes it real because the learners are truly express their feelings towards a written piece to someone, the audience listening to the story. Whether it is a dialogue, monologue, or narrative, the learners have to exercise everything they have accumulated through years of learning. 

Readers' Theater Story 

• Smelly Socks by Robert Munsch      

** Please write in the comment section if you need the RT script. 

It’s easy to get fatigued sometimes in our teaching when our brains went totally dry and can’t come up with any ideas to boost the learning energy in the classroom. 

Here are some quick go activities I collected through colleagues or online resources. It is always great to come back for a revisit now and then.

*The first* article is from infromED in 2013. It offers 25 tricks to jumpstart routine lessons. They are divided into subjects: Math, Reading, Writing, Science, Social Studies, and offered when a specific skill or skill is targeted at. The ideas are very practical and easy to implement given that our ESL/EFL curriculum integrates many of those subjects. My favorites are 
 

• adding music or rhythm when working on number counting/multiplication
• adding movement, drama or party to recreate or actualize an event 
  
• adding manipulatives when too much mental exercise is taking place 
• adding student-student quiz masters when discussion or teacher-student QA is wearying the classes out
• adding candy/chocolate or any kind of treats to boost students’ interests and energy

These ideas are all simple and practical. I always feel pumped again when I come back to revisit these ideas. 

*The second* article is written by teachtought in 2018, specifically addresses the necessity to get students moving in the classroom and it offered 5 activities to be incorporated in any lessons.  Simple and easy to prepare. 

• Gallery Walk or Chalk Talk - giving and gathering feedbacks
• Whiteboard Meetings - graph or image presentations
• North-pole South-pole continuum - assessing background knowledge
• Musical mingle - finding different discussion partners
• Stations - differentiation 

Although the authors stated that their activities are used with high school students I found them also useful in the elementary classrooms when I implemented then with more control of questions I asked and more practice on the routines/discussion on the goals with the children.

這幾年來的教改，主流媒體、專家學者不斷的提醒我們，臺灣的教育要不同、得不同；討論德國、芬蘭、以色列、日本...等各國教育的文章、書籍常常是榜上有名。或許，這些方法、方式都有我們值得借鏡的地方，但我們常常忘了，我們的文化與這些國家不盡相同、教學場景不同、家長的期待不同，也因此在教育的各個階段造就出與這些國家的孩子氣質、型態不相同的學生。

孩子們的樣貌，活生生就是我們的教育下的結果，也是我們自己的翻版。

孩子們所能學習到的無法逃脫我們的集體意識。

無論教育工作者或是家長，未能深刻、深切的反省自己，改革的結果便無法朝更美好的方向前進。當我們為孩子畫下一個美麗的「自發、互動、共好」願景，卻在言語、行為中滿是恐懼、利誘、威嚇與妥協，最後便只能重複白色恐怖時期的威權教育。