“One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.” -Malala Yousafzai
KUTZTOWN HONORS PROGRAM THESIS PROJECT
As an undergraduate student, I was a part of the Kutztown University Honors Program. Part of the requirement to graduate with the Honors Distinction is to complete a Capstone thesis project. The Capstone can be about whatever the student wants, and because of this, I decided to complete a research project about Reader's Theatre. This has allowed me multiple opportunities to present at various professional conferences, and to be officially named a grant-funded researcher.
The project itself is a collection of children's books that have been adapted into Reader's Theatre scripts to help students improve their fluency and comprehension skills, while also including a list of standards that would allow for interdisciplinary learning, hitting multiple areas of content during a single lesson.
The project also includes a literature review regarding the benefits of utilizing Reader's Theatre into the Elementary classroom and anecdotal notes regarding the implementation of a script that I had the opportunity to collect during the Spring 2019 semester of my undergraduate experience through an after-school theatre club at Kutztown Elementary.