Book Acting

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Book Acting

• Storytelling and Drama in the Early Childhood
  Classroom
• By Lea M. McGee

Presented By Morgan Blanton and Missy Short
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Discussion Question

• Considering that so many children are not reading
  with basic proficiency, why not focus on the
  important basics, such as acquiring phonemic
  awareness, learning alphabetic letter names,
  practicing how to apply phonics to decode text,
  and using comprehension strategies such as
  predicting, visualizing, and summarizing? Why
  spend time on Book Acting?
• Question from p. 157 Opening paragraph of the
  article

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What Does the Research Say?

• Increases childrens language and literacy growth
• Better vocabularies
• Use more complex language (grammatically)
• Influences language use (book language)
• Better story comprehension
• Improves expressive language development
• Improves social skills (perspectives,
  negotiation, etc.)

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Step OnePreparing for Book Acting

• Selecting a book
• Repetitive dialogue or actions
• Memorable language
• Two or three major settings
• Well rounded characters (two or three)
• Narrative OR Informational
• If informational, best if
• strong narrative thread
• at least one character

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Step One Continued

• Preparing props
• Story Clothesline or Story Sticks
• Small Objects
• Items of Clothing
• Puppets
• Collars
• Masks
• See pages 161-165 for more details about how to
  make each type of prop

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Example for Book Acting

• Magic Fish by Freya Littledale
• Story Clothesline
• Mask
• Collar
• Objects

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Step One Continued

• Making decisions about how to conduct enactment
• How to introduce
• What to emphasize
• How to conduct guided book acting

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Discussion Questions

• Have you ever engaged your students in dramatic
  retelling?
• Explain how you organized it?
• What kind of props did you use?
• How did you group students? Partners? Small
  groups?

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Some Suggested Books

• Folktales
• Little Red Riding Hood, Three Pigs, Cinderella,
  Goldilocks, etc.
• Original story, international folklore, and
  different versions
• Informational Books
• with narrative thread
• See page 162-163 for a list of books

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Step TwoMultiple Read-Alouds

• Read-Alouds are most effective in small groups
  for young children
• However the author suggests
• Introduce story whole group
• Explore story small group
• Interactive Read-Aloud OR Simply Tell Familiar
  Stories

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Step Two Continued

• Purpose of Book Introduction
• Opportunities to talk about concepts, themes, and
  character traits
• Isolate specific parts of book for discussion to
  connect to childrens experiences

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Step Three Model and Guide

• Whole Group
• How to use props
• How to retell using props
• Teacher models props and retell
• Students with props as teacher retells
• Teacher models retell think-aloud before using
  props

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Step Three Continued

• Small Group
• Book Acting Center
• Practice with recently read books
• Models particular book and props
• Learn how to retell rather than reread book

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Step Four Observe

• Small Group Book Acting
• Guide own enactments
• Responsible for dividing retelling
  responsibilities and props

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Step Four Continued

• Teacher observes one child at a time
• 2 or 3 minutes
• Notes use of book language (vocabulary from book)
• Sentence length and complexity
• Accuracy in retelling
• Amount of detail from story

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Discussion Question

• Are there other things you could look for while
  observing students during Book Acting?

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Discussion Question

• How could you modify Book Acting for upper grades?