Three-year-old Reader's Theater

I came across this video a few weeks ago. I think it relates to the idea of helping children make meaning with literature. In it, you will see a three-year-old boy using a type of reader's theater to understand and remember a short poem. I remember doing this as a child - using gestures and emphasis on specific words to remember the text of a poem or song. (I even remember doing the reverse as a five- and six-year-old in the children's dance classes I took, where we would use words and chants to help us remember the dance steps we had learned.) I think that doing this type of reader's theater really helps some children make meaning from text and connects to what I ask adolescents and adults to do, which is to imagine images in their minds while reading or listening to someone read a piece of literature. I decided to post it here to share it for when we work on reader's theater later in the course.

The poem:
The Eagle, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls."