A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Readers’ Theater

Victoria Yan

Theme: The Emotional Struggles of Humans (Love, Rejection, Misunderstandings)

This lesson is designed for fifth grade ESOL students (6-7 students). The lesson will require two 35-minute periods. The readers’ theater that the students will produce is based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, Scene 1, lines 155 to 269.

Lesson Objectives:

Students will be able to:

1. Rewrite a text (from prose to dialogue) while preserving the meaning.
2. Create an ending for a text where the ending is not provided.
3. Make illustrations for text to clarify and reinforce understanding.
4. Read and dramatize the dialogue that they have written.
5. Make simple props and costumes to support dramatization.

Assessment

Students will be assessed on the following:

1. Accuracy and grammatical appropriateness of the dialogue that they write (showing that they have comprehended the meaning of the prose summary of lines from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.)
2. Creation of an ending that is coherent and plausible.
3. Illustrations that help to clarify text.
4. Reading and dramatizing the dialogue that they have written – interest, expression, appropriate movements.
5. Props and costumes used – appropriate, enhance dramatization.
   Rubrics will be given to students before each task to guide them and to provide the assessment criteria.

Procedures

1. The selected lines from A Midsummer Night’s Dream will be divided into three sections and the teacher will write a detailed and descriptive summary of each of the three sections:

A. Lines 155 – 187: Oberon asks Puck to get the flower whose juice will make Titania fall in love with the first person or object that she sees when she wakes up.
B. Lines 188 – 244: The love-sick Helena pursues Demetrius relentlessly, only to be rejected rudely and coldly by Demetrius.
C. Lines 245 – 269: Oberon asks Puck to put the juice of the flower on Titania’s eyes while she is sleeping. He then asks Puck to look for an Athenian youth (supposedly Demetrius) and put the juice on his eyes.

2. The students will be divided into three groups, with each group taking summary A, B, or C. Each student will take a role and, in their group, read the summary and then write the lines for the dialogue. The students will also draw illustrations on the pages where they write the dialogue to add interest and clarify their writing.
3. The students will create an appropriate ending to their dialogues, using their imagination and sense of story structure.
4. The students will then revise and edit their dialogues, practice reading and dramatizing the dialogues in their groups. The students will also plan for, and make simple/ representative props and costumes with materials that are readily available in the classroom.
5. Each group will read and dramatize their dialogue with music in the background (Mendelssohn’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”). A copy of their dialogue with the illustrations will be made available to the other groups.
6. After students have polished their dialogues, they may perform for other students in the school.