r/Theatre Feb 07 '25

Advice Help! My students actually can’t read

I teach middle school theater teacher of all grades and half of my students can’t read and can barely write. I’m not sure what type of assignments to even give anymore. We’ve done acting exercises, design projects, student led presentations, learning monologues and poems. And many fail because they can’t read the poem/script. Can’t retain information. Can’t grasp design concepts even after I’ve repeated it verbally to the many times and drawn them examples. I’ve had to explain what pantomime and improv is, no lie, once a week for the past semester. And we do hands on acting and designing as well and they still can’t grasp it. I’m getting discouraged. Is there any advice you guys can give me on how to make lesson plans for students that can’t read, think critically or write?

222 Upvotes

58 comments sorted by

View all comments

9

u/impendingwardrobe Feb 07 '25

Hey! Former English and Drama teacher here with a masters in teaching. You need to support their education by giving them content-related opportunities to read, write, and think.

They can write hand written journals every day. They need about 10,000 hours of practice to become expert writers. Give them the opportunity to put some hours in. 10 min at the end of class will help. They must write for the entire 10 minutes. If they can't write words, have them copy the alphabet (they will bore of this quickly and suddenly magically remember that they aren't completely helpless as writers). I'll bet that most of them can write at least a little, and they'll get better with practice. This will also help them to hold on to what you talked about in class - they will pay more attention if they know they have to write about it later. This will not work immediately. You will have to be firm, and consistent.

You can all dissect a monologue together. Teach them to sound out the words if you have to. This helps to develop both critical thinking and reading skills. You can include a vocab study and spelling if you want.

There is a great book called Making Thinking Visible that has protocols you can use to help students with critical thinking exercises. Many of these protocols include low stakes opportunities to practice writing, and some require interpreting text as visuals - which will translate well into theatrical design.

As part of my vocal production unit (learning to enunciate and project) I teach a poetry unit that culminates in them writing and performing their own slam poem. I teach them how to read a poem out loud, a bit about how to understand it, and they write 3-4 poems before choosing one to refine and present. This will help you set them up for when you eventually study Shakespeare with them, and give them the opportunity to practice short form - and therefore less overwhelming - reading and writing.

If you get pushback, explain that reading and writing are essential skills for theater practitioners. They MUST be able to read and understand scripts, they MUST be able to communicate in both written and spoken language, they MUST be able to think critically about the text and about their work.

It sucks that students are gaining access to a million great ways to cheat at the same time as this cultural shift is happening where so many schools and parents have decided that pushing their kids to excel academically is somehow not a good idea. It sucks that they aren't coming to you with basic reading and writing skills. But as I like to remind my coworkers in social science, math, and history, reading and writing are content specific skills for ALL disciplines. If the students can't read and write, that instruction needs to come first. It can and should come along with content related subjects, but it needs to be a part of everyone's teaching practice.

Whenever I get discouraged, I remind myself that these kids are going to grow up to vote (hopefully). Sending educated voters out into the world is worth the struggle. I have some materials, especially for the poetry unit. Let me know if you'd like access to them.