Abstract of

Teaching Tips
Performance Literacy

Brett Dillingham

Educators struggle to find ways to engage students in literacy development and content area exploration. Performance literacy is a process of teaching students to perform their own writing—usually stories or poetry. It embraces skills in the two primary areas associated with storytelling: story development, in which students develop the skills to write original stories, poems, and other narrative events; and story delivery, in which students perform their narrative events in engaging, creative ways. Oral language development through telling and retelling stories is the foundation for writing and performing. Through this process students provide an opportunity for parents and community members to see and assess their children performing culturally responsive literacy while conducting themselves in a professional manner.

Abstract from Dillingham, B. (2005, September). Performance Literacy. The Reading Teacher, 59(1), 72–75. doi: 10.1598/RT.59.1.7