Last month's Reader's Theater Exercise allowed your students to get in the spirit of Earth Day while creating their own Reader's Theater scripts to practice and perform in the classroom. This month, our Reader's Theater Exercise is designed to improve student comprehension through focusing closely on reading expression. Lines from the Playbook® story, Ucky Duck, are provided for students to practice showing emotion and meaning while reading aloud.

It is important to remember that fluency is not only comprised of reading quickly and correctly. The National Reading Panel defines fluency as reading with speed, accuracy, and proper expression. Clearly, expression is very important for helping students to understand and absorb meaning from the text. So often, students learn to read a series of words automatically and accurately, but when asked about what they just read, they will be unable to explain what the text meant.