Tag Archives: Charles Dickens

A Christmas Play Doesn’t Have to be a Christmas Play

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We all know it. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, it can be a challenge to keep the kids engaged. My remedy has always been to stage some classroom plays or readers theater, which leads me to our awesome collection of Christmas themed titles that’ll keep even your grinchiest elf content.

But Santa isn’t going to throw coal at you if your Christmas plays aren’t Christmas plays. Take a look at what my 5th graders did with Hans in Luck, a Brothers Grimm tale that hasn’t a thing to do with wassailing or bread pudding. They used the 1906 illustrations to create a “digital comic book” while simultaneously practicing for a live stage presentation just ahead of the winter break. I can tell you the actors themselves don’t care that the play isn’t about St. Nick. They’re thrilled to be donning costumes regardless whether or not anyone gets to wear a fat suit and a beard.  And you can bet my colleagues are happy to commit some otherwise giddy class time to come watch— whether the Ghost of Christmas Present will be there or not.

Ah, but who has time to throw together an entire show now? If that’s the case, grab some scripts and just do some classroom readings! Try splitting the class into two to four groups and give each one a play. Use class time to have the kids practice them until they can read them with fluency and character, and then have them present them to the class as traditional reader’s theater—merely standing up front and reading aloud.

Ready to streamline your holiday surge? Try my Goldilocks, Pied Piper, Peter Rabbit, and Winnie the Pooh plays. If you still want to stick with the holiday theme, check out A Christmas Carol, The Gift of the Magi, The Shoemaker and the Elves, and Gabriel Grub.  

Whatever the case, make your December memorable—and easy—with ReadAloudPlays.

Happy directing!

You Say It’s a Merry Christmas? Be Forewarned!

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Christmas can be terrifying . . . especially if you don’t believe. That’s the theme-defining line from Gabriel Grub, Charles Dickens’ Gothic Christmas tale. It’s the story of a gravedigger whose disdain for the holidays results in his being put on trial by the Goblin King. It is a splendid story—and a splendid play–one of five holiday themed scripts available from ReadAloudPlays.com. (Click here to listen to what my fifth graders did with Gabriel Grub a few years ago.) Here are the others:

A Christmas Carol, adapted to be an ideal length for middle grade kids, comes with two versions—both the traditional one and a second in which Scrooge is a woman. Years ago, my students turned it into a movie. You can watch it here and use it as a preview for your own class play.

Escape from the Blacking House borrows from Oliver Twist and the Pickwick Papers to artfully tell the story of Dickens’ troubled childhood. It’s probably my most overlooked play, and it pairs perfectly with Christmas Carol. They can be downloaded as a package here.

We also have O’ Henry’s classic, The Gift of the Magi. It’s the story of an impoverished young couple who sell their most precious possessions in order to buy one another needless gifts.

Finally, we’re excited to add The Shoemaker and the Christmas Elves to our catalogue. The Brothers Grimm are known for dark, often violent stories, yet here is a delightful story with a Christmas theme. I think your students will thoroughly enjoy speaking elfin gibberish.   

Whatever the case, don’t let your December become terrifying. Whether you’re planning a full production or just need some scripts to make your in-class reading a bit merrier, now is the time to get started! Preview and download your holiday plays at my TpT storefront.

Happy directing!

Have a Dickens of a Christmas!

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We all know that last week before Christmas vacation can be a real bugger in the classroom. The kids get so worked up about yule logs and gingerbread houses (or, more truly, about the L.O.L. Doll Box or Nintendo Switch under the tree), they’re no longer able to see straight, let alone sit still for a geometry test. You can have one Dickens of a Christmas, though, by adding a couple holiday plays to your Santa letters and holiday art projects.

Charles Dickens, of course, is the undisputed master of Christmas-oriented literature, so allow me to share with you some nifty class plays based on his life and work.

Whether you plan to fully enact it or just play around with it during language arts class, my traditional, kid-friendly version of a Christmas Carol is a great place to start. Challenging for 3rd, but great for 4th-6th graders. If you want to take things a bit further, consider creating a movie version, or merely having your students adapt the play to their liking. A few years ago my fifth graders added extra dialogue, a few additional scenes, and a contemporary setting to my script to make this lovely sixteen minute film. Use it as an introduction to your work on the play (it’ll really motivate your students) or as a follow-up compare and contrast activity.

Consider pairing Scrooge with ol’ Gabriel Grub. This script is a spooky, Christmas tale about a grumpy grave digger who is dragged away on Christmas Eve by a group of wretched goblins. It’ll scare the dickens out of the younger kids, but your fourth through eighth graders will find it a fun and fascinating comparison to Scrooge. You can check out a radio pod cast my students created by clicking here.

Another Dickens classic comes from his novel, Great Expectations. My original play depicts the opening chapters. Though not explicitly about Christmas, it takes place on Christmas Eve when the orphaned Pip encounters an escaped convict on the marshes. It’s full of angst and adventure, but best suited for 6th through 9th graders (though a talented or motivated group of 5th graders could probably handle it, too.

Along with any of these, you simply must try my wonderful play about Charles Dickens’ childhood, Escape from the Blacking House. I think a great triple play Christmas show would use Blacking House as an introduction to Grub and Scrooge. But even if you merely want your kids to have more engaging access to some holiday stories, these plays are great just for in-class reading. (Build fluency be reading them twice.) All these plays, along with The Gift of a Magi and others, are available on my TpT storefront.

So if you want to have a great week before the vacation, put away that geometry test. Show your Christmas spirit with some holiday plays.

Happy directing!

Four Plays for the Humbug Holidays

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I noticed the artificial Christmas trees arrived at my local home store even before the inflatable Frankensteins and motion-activated witches had been discounted. I guess the stores are worried the holidays will sneak up on us. 

For teachers, that’s a real possibility. After all, our “classroom Christmas” typically comes a week or two before the real one. That means the “cafeteria elves” my students create every year have to be done before Thanksgiving. And in order to have ample time to cast, rehearse, and stage a holiday play, we need to get directing even sooner. So let’s get right to it. Here are four holiday classics you should consider downloading right away.   

A Christmas Carol.  This one comes with two versions. The first, a traditional, kid-friendly version, was originally published in the December 1998 issue of Storyworks.  The second, alternative-gender version, was originally published in my book, Read Aloud Plays: Classic Short Stories. It features the likes of  Eleanora Scrooge, Gladys Marley, and Tiny Tina.

Gabriel Grub. Though it has the same theme as Carol, it’s even more of a ghost story. With its cacophony of goblins, it’s downright creepy—which is why it’s a blast to enact. Check out this radio drama my students created a few years back.

Escape from the Blacking House. If you have some talented student-actors, create “A Dickens Christmas” by stringing together two or three Dickens plays. “Blacking House” isn’t so much a holiday play, but instead beautifully depicts the story of Dickens’ “perilous” youth. Use it as a heart-warming preface to one or both of the other plays.

The Gift of the Magi. You know this story: a young woman sells her beautiful hair so she can buy her hard-working but impoverished husband a fancy chain for his pocket watch. Meanwhile, the young husband sells his prized pocket watch so he can buy his lovely wife some fancy combs for her hair. It’s a lovely version of O.Henry’s story about the spirit of giving.

Each of these plays takes from 15 to 20 minutes to enact, but two to four weeks to prepare a full stage production. Use them as reader’s theater, podcast, or stage performance—or as just a single reading for your classroom Christmas. They’re available on TeachersPayTeachers and Etsy. They come with the license to print a class set, and limited public school performance rights.  There are also FREE Google Forms quizzes for each of them on TpT.

Happy directing!

Time to Deck the Halls with RT!

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One of the department stores in my area pushed out their holiday inventory well before Halloween, which seem mighty early to me. But now is certainly not too early to be pushing out the holiday plays. While there may not be any Christmas pageants this year, reader’s theater is well-suited to remote instruction. Because kids have clearly-identified parts to read, your Zoom calls or Teams sessions can proceed fairly smoothly (bandwidth issues aside!). You can send students a hard copy of the script via email, or simply share your screen. Have kids practice their lines and rehearse in Zoom two or three times a week. When they’re finally reading the play smoothly, record it and share the recordings in your secure online environment. Add another layer of fun by encouraging kids to dress in costume!

I have a number of splendid RT scripts for the holidays, including my latest release, The Gift of the Magi. Originally published in the Nov. 2001 issue of Scholastic’s Storyworks magazine, it includes a comprehension activity that can be downloaded as a Google Form for free. That means in your secure Google Classroom environment you can post a PDF of the script as well as the interactive quiz!

I also have some wonderful Charles Dickens’ plays including A Christmas Carol, Gabriel Grub (the spookiest of Dickens’ holiday stories), and Pip & the Prisoner (from Great Expectations). You can check all of them out on my TeachersPayTeachers storefront. Happy directing!

Have a Dickens of a Christmas!

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A Christmas Carol 1938 movie poster public domainWe all know that last week before Christmas vacation can be a real bugger in the classroom. The kids get so worked up about yule logs and gingerbread houses (or, more truly, about the L.O.L. Doll Box or Nintendo Switch under the tree), they’re no longer able to see straight, let alone sit still for a geometry test. You can have one Dickens of a Christmas, though, by adding a couple holiday plays to your Santa letters and holiday art projects.

Charles Dickens, of course, is the undisputed master of Christmas-oriented literature, so allow me to share with you three nifty class plays based on his work.

Whether you plan to fully enact it or just play around with it during language arts class, my traditional, kid-friendly version of A Christmas Carol is a great place to start—and it’s just three bucks for a full class set. Challenging for 3rd, but great for 4th-6th graders. If you want to take things a bit further, consider creating a movie version, or merely having your students adapt the play to their liking. A few years ago my fifth graders added extra dialogue, a few additional scenes, and a contemporary setting to my “Elenora Scrooge” female-lead version and ended up with this lovely sixteen minute film. Use it as an introduction to your work on the play (it’ll really motivate your students) or as a follow-up compare and contrast activity.

Also consider pairing ol’ Scrooge with ol’ Gabriel Grub. This script is a spooky, Christmas tale about a grumpy grave digger who is dragged away on Christmas Eve by a group of wretched goblins. It’ll scare the dickens out of the younger kids, but your fourth through eighth graders will find it a fun and fascinating comparison to Scrooge. You can check out a radio pod cast my students created by clicking here.

Another Dickens classic comes from his novel, Great Expectations. My original Pip & the Prisoner play depicts the opening chapters. Though not explicitly about Christmas, it takes place on Christmas Eve when the orphaned Pip encounters an escaped convict on the marshes. It’s full of angst and adventure, but best suited for 6th through 9th graders (though a talented or motivated group of 5th graders could probably handle it, too).

So if you want to have a great week before the vacation, put away that geometry test. Show your Christmas spirit with some holiday plays.

Happy directing!

Pip & the Prisoner

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Click on the cover to preview or purchase!When most people think about Charles Dickens’ novel, Great Expectations, they land on Miss Havisham and her creepy old mansion full of spider webs, or on the adult Pip’s aspirations for greatness, or on his unrequieted love for Estella. But what I like best about the novel are those chapters focusing on Pip as a child. Maybe it has something to do with why I’m an elementary school teacher, or maybe it’s because there’s something Roald Dahl-like about Pip (no doubt Dahl was heavily inspired by Dickens), or maybe it’s just the marvelous way Dickens penned young Pip’s encounter with the escaped convict (How terrifying for a little kid—and an orphan, too—to encounter such a “wretched varmint,” and in a graveyard yet!). Whatever the case, I’ve long wanted to craft a play focusing on those early chapters of Great Expectations and am very pleased to introduce it here.

“Pip & The Prisoner” is an original script based on the first five chapters of the Dickens’ masterpiece. The script endeavors to introduce the main character, Pip, in such a way as to motivate students to want to read the full novel (presumably when assigned to them in high school), but whether Great Expectations is in one’s curriculum or not, I think you’ll find “Pip & the Prisoner” to be a lovely stand-alone bit of literature. It’s aimed at 6th through 8th graders, but could potentially be used with students in other grades (I intend to use it with my 5th graders). The story is full of irony, anxiety, and engaging dialect as Dickens successfully captures Pip’s innocence and fears while weaving in marvelously subtle humor. The play seeks to capitalize on that humor.

Great Expectations, incidentally, was published in 1860 in Dickens’ own weekly periodical, All Year Round. Because it was published serially—or one exciting section at a time—it reminds many readers of a modern soap opera, or perhaps a binge-worthy television series with a ton of twists, turns, and suspenseful cliffhangers.

The 20-minute play includes parts for ten students and numerous non-speaking “soldiers.” It was written with the stage in mind, but it can also be presented as reader’s theater or a pod-casted radio drama. The script comes with embedded discussion prompts, a standards-based comprehension and essay writing activity, teacher’s notes, answer key, and a printable of the novel’s first five chapters for easy comparing and contrasting.

Consider pairing with my other Dickens’ plays including “Gabriel Grub” and “A Christmas Carol.” Though it isn’t indicated in the play, the story take place on Christmas Eve, so all three plays could be presented as a holiday event.

Happy directing!

No Santa Hats Allowed!

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Gabriel Grub holiday playA couple of my fifth grade girls showed up at school today wearing Santa hats. “Santa hats?” I said. “We haven’t even had Thanksgiving yet!” They giggled and told me they didn’t care, to which the Scrooge in me growled , “No Christmas stuff until after Black Friday!” Of course, three hours later they were still wearing them.

It reminded me that Christmas really is just around the corner, and a great way to celebrate it is with a trio of holiday plays. You can pick up a class set of Ebenezer Scrooge for just three bucks at my TeachersPayTeachers store. This play originally appeared in the Nov/Dec 1998 issue of Storyworks and has been republished in several other Scholastic venues. It’s a succinct version developmentally-suited to upper elementary kids. Another holiday classic is O. Henry’s Gift of the Magi. It’s magi cover scope 700x984appeared in Storyworks, Scope, and Scholastic News, and today is available in my book, Read Aloud Plays: Classic Short Stories. You can often snag a PDF for just a few bucks at Teacher Express and download it immediately.

Before devising Scrooge, Charles Dickens was experimenting with the same theme in Gabriel Grub. Grub is a foul-tempered gravedigger who on Christmas Eve gets haunted by a troop of maniacal goblins. The goblins put him on trial and find him guilty of being without the Christmas spirit. It’s wildly funny and eerily spooky at the same time. Suitable for 5th through 8th graders, it’s a great play for that last chaotic day before vacation.

Especially if a few of those goblins are wearing Santa hats.

Happy directing!

Happy Holidays!

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Here’s both a holiday treat and an example of how Read Aloud Plays can be adapted to be recorded as short films. This one, developed and enacted by my 5th graders from 2012-13, is based on my Christmas Carol play from Read Aloud Plays: Classic Short Stories, but with a little creative thought (and, admittedly, a lot of logistics), nearly any of my plays can be adapted for film. Happy Directing!

Turn Your Plays Into Movies!

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For a look at how much can be done with read aloud plays, a Flip camera, and simple Movie Maker software, check out this sixteen minute movie based on A Christmas Carol. The script comes from the book, Read Aloud Plays: Classic Short Stories, while the actors include all thirty kids from my 5th grade classroom in southern Oregon. It’s just one more example of the great things that can be accomplished with read aloud plays. Enjoy!