Staff Development

A groundbreaking book in the field of Arts Integration by InterAct Story Theatre's Founder, Lenore Blank Kelner. A Dramatic Approach to Reading Comprehension by Lenore Blank Kelner and Rosalind M. Flynn. Click here for more info. To buy a copy, Click here or visit the website of Heinemann Publishers: www.heinemann.com

InterAct Story Theatre conducts staff development workshops for teachers throughout the United States and abroad. In every workshop, teachers gain hands-on experience using simple and effective creative drama techniques that enrich and extend on-going classroom instruction. The workshops are conducted by nationally renowned drama specialist and educator Lenore Blank Kelner or a fully qualified staff person.

Lenore Blank Kelner,
Founder of InterAct Story Theatre
Lenore Blank Kelner is an actress, theatre director, playwright, teaching artist, educator, and author. Since 1981, Lenore has shown thousands of teachers in the U.S. and abroad how to make teaching fun, exciting and effective. She is a frequent presenter for the John F. Kennedy Center's Arts in Education Program. Her book, The Creative Classroom, published by Heinemann is in its 14th printing. Lenore's second book and videotape, Creative Drama in the Special Education Classroom, was published by Therapy Skill Builders. Her newest book, A Dramatic Approach to Reading Comprehension was recently released by Heinemann.

Lenore is the recipient of the 2004 Creative Drama Award from the American Alliance for Theatre and Education for outstanding work in the field of Creative Drama.

STAFF DEVELOPMENT RESIDENCIES

In these popular and effective residencies, an InterAct teaching artist works hand-in-hand with classroom teachers. They plan lessons together integrating drama with the on-going curriculum. The teaching artist demonstrates a lesson and on succeeding visits co-teaches with the classroom teachers. The design of this residency follows the guidelines for best practice procedures for effective staff development. The residency has been implemented successfully in school systems nationwide. Call for details and fees.

Bringing Literature to Life: Reading Comprehension Through Drama
(Grades K-6)
Teachers experience a step-by-step approach for dramatizing stories in their classrooms designed to promote sequencing, inference and synthesis of a text. The strategies are designed to enhance reading comprehension, develop thinking skills and promote students’ appreciation of literature.

Character Interviews: A Dramatic Approach to Reading Comprehension
(Grades PreK-2 or Grades 3-5 or Grades 6-12)
In this workshop, teachers discover how to create and host an imaginary talk show, "Books Alive!", in their classrooms. Students portray characters from a book and answer questions in role. The questions encourage the students to make predictions, draw inferences and examine the theme of the text. An amazingly fun way to achieve and assess reading comprehension!

Engage and Motivate English Language Learners (ESOL) through Drama
(Grades K-8)
Integrating drama into ELL instruction is a perfect way to engage, support, and motivate new English language learners.  Through drama, students transform receptive language (language they understand) into expressive language (language they can use). They learn to speak, read and write their new language and enjoy the process.

Drama Across the Curriculum
(Grades K-6)
Learn innovative strategies that can be used when teaching math, science, social studies, reading — anything!

Exploring Theme Through Living Statues (Tableaux) (Grades 3-12)
Living Statues (Tableaux) is a perfect drama strategy for engaging students in the exploration of theme. Through this strategy students identify and bring to life key moments in a text. In the process they discover relationships between events, characters and ideas. This simple and intriguing technique promotes synthesis as students distill a text down to its essential components and discover the author’s intent.

Making History Come Alive!
(Grades 2-6 or 6-8)
Focuses on proven techniques that bring added excitement and zest to the social studies curriculum. These strategies are guaranteed to strengthen and deepen students' comprehension of historical information.

Drama, Social Studies and Literature: A Dynamic Combination for Meeting School Standards
(Grades 3-8)
Exploring historical fiction through drama is an exciting and effective way for students to understand other times, other places and other people. This workshop, originally commissioned by the Social Studies Office of Fairfax County, Virginia, can be custom-designed to reinforce your state’s Standards of Learning for language arts and social studies.

Preparing for School Readiness through Drama
(Grades PreK-K)
Many of the skills young children need to transition smoothly into elementary school are integral to the process of drama. Learn fun and effective drama strategies that reinforce readiness skills and prepare students for success.

Drama Every Day
(Grades PreK-2)
Teachers learn fun and effective techniques especially designed for early childhood students that can be used across the curriculum in daily classroom instruction. A fun “hands-on” experience!

Building Brain Connections through Drama
(Grades PreK-2)
What is the best way for students to learn? Teachers learn a myriad of drama activities that support recent research on brain development in young children. Guaranteed to fire some neurons!

Teambuilding and Tolerance (Grades 3-8) Join drama specialist Stacey Coates and learn a variety of strategies designed to promote teambuilding and tolerance in the classroom. See her student workshop description on the Workshop page.

Preparing for Collaboration: Theatre Games and Activities that Promote Teambuilding
(Grades 1-8)
Many students are challenged when asked to collaborate, cooperate, and concentrate. Theatre games are excellent tools for helping students to refine these skills. Join Sean Layne, professional actor and arts educator, and explore a myriad of activities, ranging from simple to complex, that will challenge and strengthen students' ability to work together as a class and in small groups. Sean is a frequent presenter for the J. F. Kennedy Center.

Moments in Time: Bringing Timelines To Life Through Drama
(Grades 2-6)
This workshop explores a series of drama techniques designed to bring timelines to life. These strategies can be applied to timelines related to history, literature, or science. Specific examples will be drawn from Lynne Cherry's book, A River Ran Wild. A great way to deepen students’ comprehension about specific moments in time! The workshop is led by Sean Layne.

Telling Stories to Enhance Reading Comprehension
This hands-on workshop integrates storytelling, theater with English/Language Arts standards. Participants will learn the tools and the art of storytelling to create a verbal as well as a physical interpretation of a story. Sequencing and inference will be stressed. This wonderful introduction into this universal art form is led by Diane Macklin, M.A.T.

Creative Drama For Creative Learning (CDCL) - An Unforgettable Summer Institute Creative Drama for Creative Learning is a professional development program that InterAct Story Theatre’s Founder Lenore Blank Kelner helped design and implement for the teachers of Sarasota County Public Schools in Florida. In this program, teachers learn creative drama as a methodology for teaching language arts, social studies and character development. For five years this curriculum was only available to the Sarasota County Public School System, which has won numerous arts in education awards. Now this outstanding and comprehensive program and curriculum is available to school systems nationwide. Please call for details and fees.

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