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Review
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Extraordinary Women from U.S. History: Readers Theatre for Grades
4-8. Chari R. Smith. Portsmouth, NH: Teacher Ideas Press, 2003.
150 pages, $25.00 paper.
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Extraordinary Women from U.S. History provides teachers in
grades 4-8 with all the materials and ideas needed to use "Readers
Theatre" as a teaching strategy in their classrooms. The author
emphasizes teaching women's history rather than staging a classroom
play. The book's Introduction gives teachers practical and creative
methods for initiating "Readers Theatre" by describing
how to position the players, and ways to engage as many students
as possible. For example, the author suggests dividing the class
into two groups who then read the play to each other, thus reinforcing
the historical content. When presenting to parents, she urges students
to enhance their presentations by creating a simple backdrop painted
on cardboard boxes or other materials. Teachers could also enlist
the help of an art teacher in creating these backdrops. The first
chapter presents warm up activities and stresses ways to teach students
to become good readers such as changing facial expressions and using
different voices and walking steps. The author also describes several
improvisational activities to help students develop the fundamentals
of acting. While not necessary for presenting "Readers Theatre,"
these procedures can help students develop stage confidence and
acquire additional skills.
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The women selected for the book provide
a diversity of characters and achievements that should interest
most students. Each reading focuses on a dramatic episode in the
life of an "extraordinary" woman. The selection includes:
Sacagawea and Her Journey West; Susan B. Anthony's Fight
For Women's Rights; Harriet Tubman's Road to Freedom;
Elizabeth Blackwell's struggles to become the First Woman Doctor;
The Tale of a Journalist by Nellie Bly; Laura Ingalls Wilder's
Growing Up a Pioneer; Eleanor Roosevelt as Eleanor;
and Babe Didrikson Zaharias Beginnings. Each script divides
into several scenes described by a narrator and concludes with an
epilogue summarizing each character's final years. The cast includes
two narrators as well as optional characters designed to increase
the number of student participants if needed.
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Each of the eight chapters includes
a brief lesson plan consisting of background information and varied
directions for staging a "Readers Theatre." The "Background"
sets the context for each "extraordinary" life. "Presentation
Suggestions," such as backdrops and staging for different members
of the cast, vary for each woman. Each lesson plan concludes with
creative follow up activities. These differ for each chapter and
include such ideas as writing parts of the play to include additional
characters or historical or imagined circumstances, questions to
get students to think historically, ideas for improvisation, and
writing activities such as developing a journal using quotes from
Eleanor Roosevelt's syndicated column, "My Day." The book
also provides an excellent template for those teachers who want
to write their own scripts on topics other than women in U.S. History.
The scripts, written for 4th to 8th graders,
can be read in twenty to thirty minutes, thus leaving sufficient
class time for exploring the historical events surrounding each
woman's experience. Hence the presentation becomes a learning activity
with the script merely the medium for engaging students in a historical
message. "Readers Theatre" presents an excellent and realistic
alternative when teachers, pressed for time, must often choose between
student learning and student testing.
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