World Book’s Dramatic Learning expands proven approaches to building reading fluency and content comprehension. By turning texts into plays, skits, and monologues; providing adaptations of classic works; and showing how to apply these materials in the classroom, Dramatic Learning can help students become more fluent readers, understand core concepts, and internalize content.

Key features
• Original scripts, skits, and monologues, and adaptations of classics
• Curriculum-focused activities
• Background information on each play
• A step-by-step guide to make putting on a play easy and accessible
• Vocabulary exercises to improve comprehension
• Printable programs and posters
• Writing activities to help students generate their own mini-scripts
• Assessment rubrics
• Curriculum correlations
• Standards-based, differentiated learning
• Mini-inquiry research projects
• Video tutorials for educators
• Links to related encyclopedia content
• One-click dictionary to build vocabulary
• Standards-based lessons utilizing the highest levels of Bloom’s taxonomy

Studies show benefits of classroom theater
Plays inherently come with built-in strategies to help students read better. The acting out of story dialogue compels readers to work more closely with the text to interpret and project meaning into the experience. As a result, students show improvement in vocabulary, comprehension, and retention.

Critical Links, a study by the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Department of Education, concluded that “the value of classroom theater in facilitating an understanding and interpretation of literature is deep and long lasting.” Further, the study reported that “research shows consistent positive associations between dramatic enactment and reading comprehension.”

Research has shown that repeated guided oral reading is the most effective method for improving fluency. According to the National Reading Panel, repeated oral reading procedures that included guidance from teachers and peers had a significant and positive impact on word recognition, fluency, and comprehension across a range of grade levels.

Take a tour of Dramatic Learning

Please do not respond directly to this e-mail. For a free trial or more information, contact your World Book sales representative or call 800-975-3250 (U.S.) or 800-837-5365 (Canada)

Please forward this announcement to other staff and World Book Web users in your school or library.