Teacher’s notes
Response
Responding encompasses the personal and intellectual connections a student makes with texts. It also recognises that students and texts to which they respond reflect social contexts. Responding typically involves:
•	Reading, listening and viewing that depend on, but go beyond, the decoding of texts
•	Identifying, comprehending, selecting, articulating, imagining, critically analyzing and evaluating.
NSW Syllabus for the Australian Curriculum: English K-6 Syllabus Volume 1, p146
Readers Theatre
Readers Theatre involves readers reading individually from a short script. 
It has been referred to as the ‘theatre of the mind’ because the audience is left to imagine the scene and action from the sounds of the voices and the use of symbolic gestures by the performers. 
Readers Theatre scripts may be prose narratives or poems. They are generally prepared so that ‘voices’ in the text are assigned to different readers. The emphasis for the readers is on the voice- tone, pace, pause, intonation and emphasis. The scripts are usually placed in neutral folders. The readers hold these so that the audience can see any gestures or actions. The reader makes a symbolic gesture to assist the audience to visualise the action as he or she reads the part.
Choral Dramatisation
Choral dramatisation is a presentation form in which a group of students speak and move as a chorus. It is suitable for poetry or for prose poetry. It works best with groups of about five or six students. The poem or prose poetry may be spoken in unison and/or divided between the voices in the group. The group can move symbolically to express the mood of the poem.