Lesson 4 - Experience
Reader’s Theatre
The Grown-Up Scoop
Books Alive! Student Entertainment (BASE) Reader’s Theatre is designed to engage participants in social emotional learning and apply lessons taught through reading and stories.
Creating Your Production
Together create your own version of H is for Homerun in its entirety or part. To help you through this process, follow these five steps:
1. Think about a journey you will take. Use VOICE/WORDS, to describe a plan, divided into three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. Just a sentence or two will do!
What baseball facts will you include? (Positions, equipment, teams, minor/major/little leagues)
Where are historic places might you recreate? (Wrigley Field, Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium)
How can your space become a stadium? (Sound of the audience, smell of popcorn, flood lights)
2. Next, think about the BODY and the movement /music for the journey:
What can your kids safely demonstrate? (swinging a bat, sliding to first, pitching, catching a pop fly?) • Would your students like to sing a verse of “Take Me out to the Ballgame”?
Explore songs about baseball online with your students for more ideas (“Put Me in Coach,” “Glory Days,” “Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio,” “Centerfield,” “Load Up the Bases”)
3. Use your IMAGINATION, creating/collecting some props/costumes from around the house/classroom. Go back to your plan, the middle of your journey:
Scour your gym for light-weight plastic bats and inflatable bats. Students can also make baseball bats from shipping tubes or by rolling up poster board!
Can students wear team hats, jerseys, or bring mitts from home? Can you create a class team logo to pin onto any t-shirt?
From stadium lights and bleachers to outfield fences and scoreboards, imagine what you can do with a paper roll and markers!
If scheduling your performance around lunch time, can traditional baseball stadium fare be “sold” by a student “vendor”?
4. Now FOCUS:
How are the child/children feeling about this endeavor? Why? Are they able to verbalize their favorite thing about this process? What feels easy? Are there problems?
5. PRACTICE: run through your production in full costumes and using all your props.
COOPERATION for your own dress rehearsals: Not all children may want to perform, solo or in a group. All members of a family, classroom, or community can contribute to a performance. Cooperating comes in many forms: gathering props; drawing artwork for scenery, invitations, programs; creating outfits; singing/dancing; providing background sounds; adjusting lighting; distributing flyers; and LISTENING!
Perform!
You’ve created your play, now it’s time to perform it! When your group feels ready, invite an audience. Your audience could be family members, friends, other students/classes, or community members!
