The Reader, the Text, the Performance: Opening Spaces for the Performing Arts as Reader Response

• In Event: 45.071 - Literature for Learners K–12 and Beyond: Texts as Spaces for Inquiry and Engagement

Abstract

When teachers welcome and encourage multimodal responses to literature, particularly through the performing arts, students can harness sources of strength not typically featured in reading classrooms to connect to their background knowledge and demonstrate powerful transactions with printed text. Through analysis of three student examples, we argue that incorporating the performing arts into students' daily classroom reading routines as reader response options allows teachers to witness more of students' capabilities as readers. We focus specifically on drama, song, and dance as literacies practices. Furthermore, because audiences are involved in such artistic performances, the production of a new performed text of meaning also offers classmates opportunities to extend textual understandings.

Authors

• Grace Enriquez, Lesley University

• Amanda Claudia Wager, Vancouver Island University