Civil Rights plays – ReadAloudPlays.com

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!

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!