Readers Theatre and Reading Comprehension: An Experimental Study Among Grade 7 Students

Abstract

Many students can decode but fail to construct meaning from text. Readers Theatre (RT) — a repeated-reading, prosody-focused, performance-based approach — has been proposed to support fluency and comprehension through repeated, purposeful reading, enhanced prosody, and social/interpretive engagement. The present study tests whether RT produces greater comprehension gains than traditional oral text reading among Grade 7 students. True-experimental design with random assignment of two intact Grade 7 sections: experimental (RT; n = 30) and control (traditional oral reading; n = 30). Two trial runs were conducted using two different narrative texts. Pre-tests and post-tests (teacher-designed, aligned to a table of specifications) measured reading comprehension for each trial. Descriptive statistics and independent-samples t-tests (? = .05) were used to evaluate differences between groups. Both groups began with very low pre-test comprehension levels. In Trial 1 the experimental group’s MPS rose from 42.17 (very poor) to 76.67 (good); the control group rose from 36.83 to 56.17. The original thesis reported a t-test for the Trial 1 post-test difference (T = 10.883, p < .001). In Trial 2 the experimental group’s MPS rose from 28.50 to 70.33, while the control group rose from 35.83 to 51.33; reported t for the Trial 2 post-test difference was T = 2.311, p = .050. Across trials the experimental group’s average percent gain was reported as 113.12% vs. 50.59% for the control group. (Note: reported degrees of freedom in the original document appear incorrect; see Methods/Limitations.)Readers Theatre produced substantially larger comprehension gains than the traditional method on the measures used. Results are consistent with theories linking repeated/prosodic reading and active reader–text engagement to deeper comprehension (e.g., repeated reading automaticity, transactional theory, and multiple-intelligences framing). Future work should (a) report correct inferential-test degrees of freedom and effect sizes; (b) use standardized comprehension measures and blind scorers; and (c) examine generalizability across grades, texts, and longer follow-up periods.