Hatchet Dramatic Reading

Ok, so it's obviously been a WHILE since I've posted, but this seemed like something other teachers could use. We're doing a parent night based on the Gary Paulsen book Hatchet and our 7th grade class decided to do a few dramatic readings as a class. I've always been interested in choral readings (see previous posts), and so this seemed to be a perfect idea that flows into that. Below is the first dramatic reading which comes directly from the end of Chapter 1.

Dramatic Reading #1

Student 1: The pilot had been talking, just a moment ago, complaining of the pain. He had been talking.
ALL: Then the jolts had come

Student 2: The jolts that took the pilot back had come, and now Brian sat and there was a strange feeling of silence in the thrumming roar of the engine

Girls: A strange feeling of silence and being alone

Boys: Brian was stopped

All: He was stopped. Inside he was stopped

Student 3: He could not think past what he saw

Student 4, 5, 6: What he felt.

All: All was stopped.

Student 7: The very core of him, the very center of Brian Robeson was stopped

Add in Girls: and stricken with a white-flash of horror,

Boys only: A terror so intense that his breathing, His thinking

All: And nearly his heart had stopped,

Girls: Stopped.

Student 8: He was sitting in a bushplane roaring

Boys: Seven THOUSAND feet

Student 9: Above the northern wilderness with a pilot who had suffered a

Girls: MASSIVE heart attack

Student 10: He was alone

Boys: In the roaring plane with no pilot, he was alone

ALL: ALONE!

Even to use this sort of thing within a normal reading day would be really cool!! Let me know if you try this in your classroom!