A Good Time to Say Thanks.

Posted on December 15, 2015 by Mackowiecki

This week I just want to say THANK YOU to all you FANTASTIC teachers who have used Read Aloud Plays in class. I hope they’ve brought you and your students a ton of enjoyment and value. Thank you also for all your positive comments. With 38 fifth graders demanding my attention every day, I simply don’t have enough time to respond to many of them, but here are a few recent ones I think are especially fruitful.

Your plays are wonderful and they make the original texts more approachable to my students! Thank you! ~ Laura M. (regarding The Monkey’s Paw gothic masterpiece)

I think we can all relate to the challenges of reading a piece of Victorian literature. Why subject yourself to the yawns of middle school readers when you can first wake them up with a read aloud play?

I added songs in between each of the scenes and used this for our Black History Month performance! The children enjoyed it, and learned a lot in the process. Thank you! ~ Linsey P. (Jackie Robinson black history play)

Two of my plays—“We Shall Overcome” and “Gonna Let in Shine”—have the songs built in to the play, but several others are easily adapted. Black History Month is just around the corner, so take Lindsey’s advice and consider staging a Civil Rights musical.

I like how it’s short and to the point. After reading the novel, the 6th grade wants to make a movie and we’re using that script. Thanks! ~ Barbara Ann M. (Ebenezer Scrooge: A Christmas Carol play)

Thank you! Because the majority of my plays were first published in classroom magazines including Scope and Storyworks, they’re specifically designed to be short and to the point. My goal is to capture the essence of the original story while limiting the play to about fifteen minutes in length. Still, I encourage teachers and students to edit and adapt. A few years ago my 5^th graders also used this script to make a movie, but they added several short scenes, modernized the setting, and changed several lines to suit what they wanted to portray. I consider that 16 minute movie (which can be viewed here, if you’re interested) as one of the highlights of my career.

Lewis never disappoints. This will be terrific as part of my Spooktober unit for theater class. ~ Lu J. (Hawthorne’s The Birthmark Gothic Reader’s Theater)

What a wonderful compliment! Thank you. And I love the idea of a Spooktober theater event. I’m going to try that next year!

Great resource and student engaging. You can practice RT daily to work on fluency and comprehension. Thank you! ~ Heather W. (Lewis & Clark and Bird Girl: Sacagawea play )

Fluency practice is really the academic justification for reader’s theater, isn’t it? But I think the foundation is that most kids love it. Simply put, Read Aloud Plays make school fun. Admittedly, my plays are geared to intermediate and lower middle school, but when you can find good material, even jaded upper middle school and high school kids enjoy RT.

Excellent play. This tied in perfectly with my Civil Rights unit. ~ Dayan S. (Montgomery Bus Boycott MLK “Twice Toward Justice” Play)

Thank you. I’m particularly proud of my civil rights plays. My editors at Storyworks recently asked me to work on a new one for this spring. To create a consistent “feel,” I re-read some of the old ones. I think the “Twice Toward Justice” play is indeed powerful, but I also rediscovered what I think is a real gem in the play entitled “MLK’s Freedom March.” I highly recommend it.

Next month, I’ll be releasing on TpT my very first Civil Rights play. “I Have a Dream: the Childhood of Martin Luther King, Jr” first appeared in Storyworks sixteen years ago. How fortunate I am that my editors liked it so much. They’ve been feeding me much-loved Black History assignments ever since.

Our high school graciously offered to perform this for my middle school class. To prepare in a jiffy, we did this reader’s theater and the kids loved it – especially the ghost noises. Turns out the HS play was very ‘stylized’ and there is NO WAY my kids would have known what was happening if they hadn’t had this resource as a basis to get the underlying plot. This was absolutely perfect. Many thanks. ~ Michelle C. (Ebenezer Scrooge: A Christmas Carol play)

I love this. Haven’t we all at some point shared a story, taken our students to a performance, or watched a movie that was beyond the developmental level of our students? How nice it is to have a Read Aloud Play to introduce kids to the story or historical event before hitting them with the original text or text book account.

Thanks again, and cheers to a new year of Read Aloud Plays! I have a lot of great items planned for 2016, so stay with me, won’t you?

Happy directing!

Pairing Plays and Picture Books for Black History Month

Posted on February 3, 2015 by Mackowiecki

With Black History Month upon us, two bits of news caught my eye last week: the State of South Carolina issued a stirring acknowledgement of the injustices suffered by African-Americans in the 1950s and 60s when it apologized to “The Friendship Nine,” nine young men who, in 1961, were sentenced to thirty days on a chain gang simply for participating in a Sit-in.

The second item was an excellent post at the Center for Teaching Quality. Educator Liz Prather writes that the controversial elements of the recently-released Selma movie makes the film “a great discussion engine for subjects like non-violent activism, Dr. King, and the civil rights movement.” The Common Core, notes Prather, requires that we teach students to “evaluate authors’ differing points of view on the same historical event or issue by assessing the authors’ claims, reasoning, and evidence.” While the Selma movie is too mature for elementary and middle school students, it got me thinking about pairing Read Aloud Plays with developmentally-appropriate books and films so to compare and contrast point of view. Here are a few:

* The Disney movie, Selma, Lord Selma, and the Read Aloud Play, Gonna Let it Shine.
* My play from the Montgomery Bus Boycott, The Girl Who Got Arrested, and Phillip Hoose’s book about Claudette Colvin, Twice Toward Justice.
*Sitting Down for Dr. King, which depicts the Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-ins of 1960, and Andrea Davis Pinkney’s book, Sit-in: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down.
* Peter Golenbrock’s book, Teammates, depicting the relationship between Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese, and the Read Aloud Play, How Jackie Changed America.
* We Shall Overcome, my play about the Birmingham Children’s Crusade, and Cynthia Levinson’s non-fiction book, We’ve Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children’s March.
*Days of Jubilee, by Patricia and Fredrick McKissack, and my play, Freedom for the First Time, which is based on slave narratives from the Civil War.
*The Read Aloud Play, Box Brown’s Freedom Crate, and Ellen Levine’s book, Henry’s Freedom Box.

To get your classroom discussion going, I’ve developed a simple short-answer comparison activity covering Craft & Structure (Literature item 6 and Informational Text item 6). You can download it for free here and use it with my plays and any paired text to satisfy these standards by having students “analyze multiple accounts of the same event or topic.”

Happy directing!

Celebrate Your Slow Readers

Posted on January 19, 2015 by Mackowiecki

I recently read an article about how “slow reading” is gaining acceptance as an academic approach. Though the piece was aimed at high school and college instructors, the gist remains the same at the elementary and middle school levels: let’s slow our kids down and have them read meaningfully. To this I say, “hot dang!” I’ve long been an advocate of focusing on accuracy and beauty rather than speed.

The purveyors of Oral Reading Fluency measures no doubt developed their program with good intentions. They saw a correlation between quality reading and speed. They found that good readers, when tested by the minute, can read fast. Consequently, oral reading fluency has become the king of qualifiers for Special Ed and Title I services. The flaw is that the formula isn’t commutative (if I may borrow a math concept for a moment): good readers may be able to read fast, but it doesn’t work in the opposite direction. Emphasizing ORF scores teaches kids to read fast, but that doesn’t mean they’ll read well. In fact, all this emphasis on speed is probably causing kids to struggle more than ever.

The emphasis in my classroom is on reading with accuracy, personality, and comprehension. Obviously, I believe plays are the perfect vehicle for doing just that, though the process of re-training kids who have been under the ORF thumb for so long isn’t without its tribulations. My students just recorded their first set of radio dramas. When it came time to record, there was a lot of mumbling, stumbling, and stammering from some, while others read their parts like people actually talk. And, get this, there was no correlation between such quality reading and their ORF scores! In fact, some of my lowest “per minute” readers read the most beautifully; some of my highest, rather poorly. You guessed it: the factor of greatest influence was whether or not a given student read independently at home during the two weeks leading up to the recording session.

This month you can encourage great reading by staging a trio of plays for Black History Month in February. Plays such as Freedom for the First Time and Box Brown’s Freedom Crate teach about slavery while giving kids the chance to practice their slow southern drawls. Plays such as Sitting Down for Dr. King and The Girl Who Got Arrested re-enact inspiring moments from the Civil Rights Movement. There are several other Black History titles available (including this one–a free gift to my readers during January!), but whether you use my plays or not, consider jumping on the “slow reading” band wagon and let February be about teaching your students to read beautifully.

Happy directing!

MLK Day Inspiration

Posted on January 3, 2015 by Mackowiecki

I’ve been fortunate to have forged a lasting relationship with Scholastic publishers, particularly the wonderful editors at Storyworks and Scope magazines. Through my work with them I’ve developed a reputation for writing compelling reader’s theater about Martin Luther King and African-American history in general. Somehow, I’ve been able to accurately represent the historical events and, more importantly, convey the spirit of Dr. King’s work through such plays as “Sitting Down for Dr. King.” With MLK Day upon us, and given that February is Black History Month, I want to encourage you to give some of my reader’s theater scripts a try.

I’m particularly proud of “Sitting Down.” I remember struggling over it when I was writing it back in 2002.There I was, bouncing one bad idea after another off my laptop screen, regretting having accepted the contract at all, when I realized how very simple my task was in comparison to the mammoth challenge undertaken by Dr. King. Soon thereafter I crafted the fictional story of “David,” a twelve-year-old white kid frustrated that these African-American college students were getting in the way of his birthday shortcake at the Woolworths. “Sitting Down” has since appeared in three different Scholastic venues including Storyworks, a text book series, and a leveled reading set, but I’m proud of it because it has a powerful ending that I believe Dr. King would have respected.

I think my play, “Gonna Let it Shine” also conveys the spirit of Dr. King’s work. It’s based upon the true story of Sheyann Webb, who was just eight years old when she braved tear gas and posse men while marching alongside Dr. King. She became known as “Dr. King’s Youngest Freedom Fighter,” and her story is the subject of the Disney movie, “Selma, Lord, Selma.” The play originally appeared in Storyworks under the title “Pigtails & Protests.” In the process of re-writing it for release on TeachersPayTeachers, I had the privilege to talk with Sheyann herself, who is today–some fifty years later–a public speaker and Civil Rights advocate. It was surreal to speak with someone who in my writing was still just a child. It was inspiring to connect with someone who not only knew Dr. King and numerous other heroes of the Movement, but was in fact a Civil Rights hero in her own right.

“We Shall Overcome” tells the story of the Birmingham Children’s Crusade. That’s the event where students, some nearly young as Sheyann, were attacked by police dogs and knocked to the ground by blasts from fire hoses. News coverage of their sacrifice swayed worldwide public opinion in favor of desegregation.

“The Girl Who Got Arrested,” meanwhile, tells the true story of Claudette Colvin, the first person to be hauled off a city bus and tried in court for defying Montgomery’s segregated busing law. Her story is depicted in the book, “Twice Toward Justice.” I certainly don’t want to diminish the work of Rosa Parks, but in my humble opinion, Claudette’s story is far more compelling.

One of my “under sung” plays is “MLK’s Freedom March.” It’s a work of historical fiction about a girl named Lucy who helps her ailing grandmother get to Washington to hear MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech. There’s also “In the Jailhouse with Dr. King,” about a troubled teenage who turns it around when he witnesses King’s calm demeanor in the face of violence during the Bus Boycott. These and other plays capture the essence of MLK’s work. Consider celebrating MLK Day and/or Black History Month in your classroom by picking any three, dividing your class into three groups, practicing for a couple weeks, and then presenting them with opportunity for discussion in between. In so doing, you’ll be giving your students a strong foundation in MLK history, and perhaps the inspiration to make history themselves.

Happy Directing!

Selma Movie, Selma Play

Posted on November 22, 2014 by Mackowiecki

Buzz about Oprah Winfrey’s new movie Selma is shining a light on the Selma to Montgomery March. The film, which depicts the 1965 events in Alabama, drew standing ovations at its screening in New York. Says film critic Roger Friedman, “Watching ‘Selma’ you really feel like all the plays, movies, TV shows, songs– every theater piece about King– all of it culminates in this film.” (Click here to see the trailer.)

Selma was the site of protests over voting rights. African-Americans there and in neighboring counties were routinely denied the right to vote through the use of poll taxes, threats of retribution, proficiency tests, and other manipulations. Today, that all sounds pretty vanilla, but make no mistake, Selma was a terrifyingly murderous place.

Dr. King, Hosea Williams, James Bevel, and other civil rights leaders organized a march to the state capital where they hoped to confront then-Governor George Wallace. But when the marchers arrived at the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the outskirts of town, state troopers—including many on horseback—violently attacked the marchers with clubs and tear gas. It became known as Bloody Sunday. International news coverage of the violence led directly to the signing of the Voting Rights Act, a turning point in the civil rights struggle.

The movie’s release date (Christmas Day) is timed to take advantage of the annual focus on MLK Day in January and Black History Month in February. But this is an important bit of history regardless of one’s race. We live in an era of voter apathy, a time when we tend to take our right to vote for granted. If our students have any hope of changing the world, one would think they’ll need to reclaim the voting booth. Our kids need to know this story both for what it means to America’s history and for what it means for America’s future. “There’s a lump in your throat at the end of ‘Selma,’” says Friedman. Kids need to experience that lump in the throat.

I don’t know what the movie will be rated, but due to its mature content, I doubt any of us will ever be able to share it in our elementary or middle school classrooms. But you can take advantage of the interest in the film by using the read aloud play, Gonna Let it Shine. It depicts the Selma campaign from the perspective of Sheyann Webb, who was eight at the time. Sheyann, along with her friend Rachel West, became known as “Dr. King’s youngest freedom fighters.” Sheyann was there at the rallies, at the funerals, and on the bridge. She experienced the sting of teargas. She ran from Sheriff Clark’s posse. Her story is a great way to introduce students to the civil rights struggle and to help them appreciate their future voting rights.

The play is available at TeachersPayTeachers and ReadAloudPlays.com. Happy directing!

Why this Play is Important

Posted on September 14, 2014 by Mackowiecki

Students will quickly connect with eight-year old Sheyann Webb. When African-Americans were being denied the right to vote, she became Martin Luther King’s “Smallest Freedom Fighter” by joining marches on the local courthouse. As the events in 1965 Selma, Alabama, escalated, Sheyann began sneaking out of the house to attend meetings at Brown Chapel. She was there, too, on the Edmund Pettus Bridge when Selma exploded with tear gas and Billy clubs. The event became known as Bloody Sunday, and it directly led to the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But what makes this story compelling is the perspective. We’re used to hearing about the Civil Rights struggle from the viewpoint of adults, yet here is the true story of a little girl who not only saw it, but was there on the front lines risking the same dangers as her adult counterparts. What better way to engage your students in the Civil Rights Movement!

My new play, “Gonna Let it Shine,” shares Sheyann Webb’s emotional, often frightening childhood experience. Carefully researched, it improves upon an earlier version that appeared in Storyworks in 2012. It’s important to your students because it’s a kid’s story. Your students will relate to Sheyann. They’ll admire her courage. They’ll wander if they’d have been as strong. And they’ll root for her, regardless of their own race. Most of all, they’ll be inspired by her. Sheyann will show your students that one doesn’t have to be a grown-up to have a grown-up influence on the world.

“Gonna Let it Shine” is available on my storefront at TeachersPayTeachers for preview or purchase. As with all my plays, the original purchaser is licensed to reproduce one class set per year for use in his or her own classroom.

Along with the play, I also created a free vocab and comprehension activity that aligns the play to specific Common Core standards. Be sure to share with your students the Disney movie, Selma, Lord, Selma. It depicts Sheyann’s story with typical Disney flare. There’s also an accurate and intriguing YouTube video detailing Sheyann’s contribution to Civil Rights that can be found here. Consider comparing and contrasting all three.

Finally, the Sheyann Webb of today has remained an advocate for children and civil rights. Find out more about her work by visiting the Sheyann Webb Group.

Happy Directing!

Why You Should Teach Black History on April 15th

Posted on March 30, 2014 by Mackowiecki

The Major League Baseball season is underway, which seems a trivial point in the broad scheme of academics. Yet were it not for Jackie Robinson’s breaking of the color-barrier, education in America might look alarmingly different.

When I was growing up, I was a sports fanatic. By then, professional sports had already been integrated, so it was easy for me–as Dr. King would say--to judge a man by his character rather than the color of his skin. The grit and tenacity of Matty Alou on the baseball diamond and Terry Metcalf on the gridiron made them my heroes and helped teach me to be “color-blind.” But the fact that Alou and Metcalf were out there at all was the direct result of Jackie Robinson’s own grit and determination.

There was never any doubt that Robinson had the talent to play in the Major Leagues. The issue was whether or not he’d have the character necessary to withstand the racist slurs and physical violence that followed him everywhere he went, both on and off the ballfield. Imagine what would have happened had Jackie responded in kind, perhaps taking a swing at a white player who’d deliberately spiked him, or kicking dirt at an umpire who refused to call a fair game. He would have been quickly drummed out of baseball. Integration of all our institutions, including education, would have been delayed for decades.

No doubt you have a crop of kids in your classroom who idolize professional athletes. Whether black, white, or striped (as Pee Wee Reese is quoted as saying), learning about Jackie Robinson will help them judge their fellow man by his character just as they judge their sports heroes by their grit.

April 15^th is Jackie Robinson Day, the day every Major League player wears number 42 in Jackie’s honor. The league doesn’t celebrate it because Jackie was a great player, but because of the importance and difficulty of Jackie’s accomplishment. It’s a great time to enact How Jackie Saved the World. Kids consistently tell me it’s one of their absolute favorites to perform. I’m confident your students—especially your young sports fans—will enjoy it as well. You can preview and/or purchase it from TeachersPayTeachers by clicking here. You can also listen to some of my students performing it by following this link.

Happy directing!

One of My Best MLK Plays, Free!

Posted on February 11, 2014 by Mackowiecki

As part of its Black History Month celebration, Scholastic publishers is offering my most oft-published play for free. I Have a Dream shows how experiences during Martin’s childhood prepared him for the day he’d deliver his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. It’s included in my book, Read Aloud Plays: Symbols of America, but you can download it in PDF simply by clicking here (the download link is near the bottom of the page). Scholastic’s site even includes questioning strategies, and best of all, there are no strings! It’s completely free. If you enjoy “I Have a Dream,” be sure to check out my other Civil Rights plays including Sitting Down for Dr. King, We Shall Overcome, and MLK’s Freedom March.

Black Students Denied Service

Posted on January 5, 2014 by Mackowiecki

Imagine seeing the words “Whites Only” at your favorite restaurant! We can be thankful that it’s unthinkable today. But when so much time has passed, how do we help today’s kids truly make sense of such attitudes and events?

On February 1^st, 1960, four African-American college students walked into a Woolworth’s Store, sat down at the lunch counter, ordered and were refused coffee. They vowed to stay until the store desegregated its lunch counter. Five months later, Woolworth’s finally relented and began serving blacks and whites alike. It was an important moment in the history of American. The event is portrayed in my original Storyworks play, “Sitting Down for Doctor King.”

What better way to honor his legacy, meet the Common Core, and give your students an authentic Civil Rights experience than by re-enacting events such as Greensboro? Read aloud plays put your students in the action, allowing them to understand the motivations and feelings of the participants firsthand. Read Aloud Plays also help satisfy many of the Literature and Information Text standards in grades 3 through 7. But students can also utilize Read Aloud Plays to “adapt speech to a variety of contexts”, “evaluate a speaker’s point of view”, and “integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media…,” which are all Speaking and Listening standards.

And there’s no limit as to how you use them. Pair plays with discussion, history videos (there are a ton of them on the Web), chapters from your History text book, works of literature, picture books, and more. Read a play once, or divvy up parts and practice for three or four weeks. Read Aloud Plays can be fit into almost any schedule and almost any curriculum.

For starters, check out my original Read Aloud Plays about the Greensboro Sit-ins, the Birmingham Children’s Crusade, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and The March on Washington, where Dr. King presented his I Have a Dream speech. Or explore some of my other Black History plays. Nearly all my plays were commissioned by and originally published by Scholastic, so you know they’re of the highest quality, and all of them come with reproduction and performance rights. If you’re new to using drama, also be sure to download my free guide.

Satisfy the CCSs and bring MLK Day to life for your students. Download some Read Aloud Plays today. Happy Directing!

April 15th is Jackie Robinson Day

Posted on March 30, 2013 by Mackowiecki

April 15^th is Jackie Robinson Day, the day every Major League player wears number 42 in Jackie’s honor. The league doesn’t celebrate it because Jackie was a great ballplayer, but because of the importance and difficulty of Jackie’s accomplishment. It’s a great time to enact How Jackie Saved the World. Kids consistently tell me it’s one of their absolute favorites to perform. I’m confident your students—especially your young sports fans—will enjoy it as well. You can preview and/or purchase it from TeachersPayTeachers by clicking here. You can also listen to some of my students performing it by following this link.

Happy directing!