Tag Archives: play scripts for kids

What We Believe

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As you head back to school you may find yourself in long-winded meetings wrestling over your institution’s “mission statement.” I hope you don’t have to go through such torture, but you might. The mission has always seemed pretty darned obvious to me: give kids the best academic experience possible. Done. Now can we get to work in our classrooms?

A reader recently asked me what our mission statement is at ReadAloudPlays.com. I guess they felt inclined to subject me to the same kind of torture their admin was inflicting upon them. Well, our mission is pretty straight forward: Craft plays scripts that teachers will want to use because kids love them and learn from them. Done.

But, I guess I can’t shake all those teacher inservice sessions in which admins demanded we define the meaning of every jot and tittle, that we crossed our t’s and dotted our i’s, that we really descended into that rabbit hole of core beliefs, because here I am defining what exactly we believe at ReadAloudPlays.com.   

We believe that reader’s theater represents an excellent way to teach reading and engage students.

We believe that repetition leads to fluency. (See our free product citing the brain research.)

We believe scripts should be well-crafted. (I spent more than twenty years writing professionally for Scholastic.)

We believe in creativity. When I create a play, I’m trying to do something unique with it. We don’t believe AI can duplicate that.

Despite various benefits to AI (its ability to compile and summarize data, for example), we believe it will be detrimental to the arts.

We believe in live theater. We think live performances (of theater, music, etc.) will grow in demand due to the proliferation of AI-generated junk recordings and publications.

We believe standardized testing in its current form (a multi-billion dollar industry) is wasteful and unnecessary.

Though we believe in accountability, we don’t believe standardized tests accurately measure success. Nor do they hold all participants accountable (e.g. the students, their parents, and the community).

We believe “low performing” schools are reflective of struggling communities; not the other way around.

We believe voucher schemes are designed to funnel tax money to private interests and give tax breaks to wealthy people.

We believe schools are not businesses and shouldn’t be viewed as such. (See Jamie Vollmer’s book, Schools Can’t Do It Alone.) 

We believe business “efficiency” is a myth. (According to Harvard Business School, 80 to 90 percent of all businesses fail due to inefficiency, mismanagement, or a lack of demand. Those that succeed do so mostly because they land upon a “viral” product or service, not because they’re efficient.)

We believe in libraries.  Communities with functioning library systems are historically safer, healthier, and better educated than those without.

We believe computers in schools should be extremely limited, that online programs are poor replacements for real human instruction. (See The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle)

We believe teaching requires highly dedicated people (like you!).

We believe that social media and video games are highly addictive and damaging to their users and that the decline of reading is directly correlated to the growth of digital devices. (See The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt.)

We believe the standard social media algorithm is damaging to society and should be restricted.

We believe in respecting copyright. We only create plays from material in the Public Domain or for which we have explicit license.

So there you have a long-winded, in-depth mission statement that’d make any administrator call for a second in-service session in November (right when report cards are due). But at least you have an idea where we stand.

Suffice it to say, when we create a play, we’re thinking first about how kids will enjoy it, secondly about what they’ll learn from it, and thirdly about how useful it will be to the teacher. We’re not getting rich doing this (just as none of us went into teaching dreaming of $$$). We’re doing this because we believe in the power of reader’s theater plays. If you’re into that, check out all the great stuff we have for back to school such as fun introductory plays like our Winnie the Pooh collection, The Sky is Falling, and Cyclops: The Monster in the Cave.

You Deserve a Chill Conclusion!

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“I experienced all the emotions. I laughed. I cried. I got angry. It was wonderful!”

No, this wasn’t a teacher summarizing her school year. This was an adult viewer of our recent fifth grade performance of “The Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage.” But over the course of a full school year, I have no doubt you’ve experienced all the emotions, and if you’re approaching the conclusion of your year, you deserve to experience some joy. One way is to chill out with some end-of-year reader’s theater.

Our plays are masterfully crafted to make your students laugh, cry, and get angry… okay, mostly just laugh.  And for you, the teacher, these plays are easy time fillers. Devote 45 minutes or so to a single reading, or better yet, read it three or four times over a week for an impromptu in-class performance. Up the stakes by splitting the class into two or three groups and assigning each a different play. All you have to do is print copies and divvy up parts, and voila! — that’s a week’s worth of enjoyable language arts time! Along with Sausage, here’s a few recommendations:

Goldi Locks Home Reno – Our heroine wants to renovate your home!

The Pied Piper Slightly Twisted – the Revenge of the Rats!

The Nose – Gogol’s absurd story about . . . a runaway nose?

How the Elephant Got Its Trunk – From the Jungle Books

Barbed Wire – A rootin’ tootin’ cowhand version of Maupassant’s classic, A Piece of String

Toad’s Wild Ride – Even better than the Disneyland ride!

Nature Talks Back – talking trees and “killer” insects

And many others, too!  Or, if you’re looking for something more poignant, consider our Juneteenth play, Freedom for the First Time, or Stolen Childhoods, our wonderful script about Lewis Hine’s effort to end child labor a century ago. Our Newsies play is also a great season-ender. Whichever route you take, know that our plays are authentic, human made literary works, they’re kid-tested, and despite costing just four bucks, they all include basic performance rights and a comprehension activity.

Thanks for all your hard work this school year. Finish it up in style! Happy directing!

“Sausage? You’re alive?”

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Grimm Fairy Tales are indeed grim. Grandmas get eaten, apples get poisoned, children get fattened up for supper… But it doesn’t have to be that way. At ReadAloudPlays.com we’ve taken one of Grimm’s most disturbing tales and turned it into something quite delightful.

In the original story called, “The Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage,” three roommates (yes, Sausage is one of them) have a happy and contented life until Bird meets another fowl who convinces him that he’s doing too much of the hard work. He goes back and demands change, which results in the sausage getting eaten by a dog, the mouse getting boiled in their kettle, and the bird drowning in a well. Imagine having your third graders enact that!

We couldn’t—so we rewrote it.  And now, having just produced it with a small group of fifth graders, I’m kind of thinking it may just be the best play we offer!  Read on to find out how to view our recording of it!

Our version calls for music support, that is, each character has a “walk up” song. With some guidance from me, the students selected pieces such as Who Let the Dogs Out for Dog’s entrance (of course they did!), and a slice of Pavarotti for our Italian Sausage, and for the crows, a German punk hit by Rammstein. Along with some simple but clever costuming and a few props, the play was engaging from beginning to end.

My dog actor did a good job of learning her lines and delivering them in Dog’s deadpan, aloof manner, but she’s shy and unassuming. I wanted her to enter the performance all frisky-like, to jump around the audience, to sniff first graders, but she just couldn’t do it. That is, not until I got her a squeaky dog toy shaped like a bone!  You can watch her and her fellow thespians perform the play on my public school site, The Daily Platypus. The simple recoding comes via a helpful parent (my Ipad decided to quit midway through the first act). You’ll see how each character entered and how our version remains faithful to the Grimms while being a blast to perform. To give you even more insight, we also recorded several important scenes without the audience. You’ll find them at DailyPlatypus.org as well.

The “walk-up” music we used includes Kali Flowers by Chris Joss for Mouse, Build a Nest by Earth, Wind & Fire for Bird, and Pavarotti’s Saint Lucia for Sausage. We also used Sehnsuct by Rammstein for Crow and the afore mentioned Who Let the Dogs Out for Dog. We used Stan Kenton’s morose version of Saint Lucia for Mouse’s boiling scene, and we reprised Kali Flowers for our conclusion. The music was edited for length in Audacity, but your sound person could simply fade out or pause each tune during your show. And don’t forget, you can select any music you want!

We decided to make all our sets black with silver outlines, which made for a cool Grimm-like essence. Our DIY paper masks came from Etsy sellers. The most challenging component of the play (aside from getting young actors to project their voices), was creating a costume for Sausage. It was well worth the extra effort. Here we are almost a week later and younger kids are still approaching the girl who played Sausage and saying, “Sausage, you’re alive?” and then telling her how great she is. She and the rest of the cast have all become celebrities!

Your students can experience the joy of celebrity too!  The Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage, along with seventy other exceptional readers theater scripts, are available on our TeachersPayTeachers storefront. Each one has been carefully crafted by real humans and then kid-tested by real kids. Plus, they come with teacher notes, comprehension activities, and limited performance rights.

Happy directing!

Using Readers Theater to Honor Veterans

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It’s Time for Halloween Plays!

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Back a hundred years ago, ghoulishness was captured in short stories rather than comic books. Writers like Poe, Shelley, and Stevenson creeped out their audiences with dark tales of superstition, mystery, and insanity. The Gothic themes they created have been permeating literature, television, and cinema ever since. 

So what if your students are mesmerized by Venom and Doctor Octopus? There are plenty of mangled monsters and the criminally insane in W.W. Jacob’s classic, The Monkey’s Paw, Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, and Hawthorne’s The Birthmark. They’ll also find that familiar ol’ headless horseman in Sleepy Hollow, and a hapless ghost in Twain’s A Ghost Story.  No, your kids won’t find my version of Rappaccini’s Daughter Pennywise-creepy or Slenderman-scary, but its chemical concoctions and mad scientists make it very nearly as engaging. Most certainly, it’s a key to unlocking the original’s subtleties and complexities.    

Your students know these themes. They’ve seen them on the Simpsons and Family Guy, in Goosebumps and Marvel Comics. But do they know from whence they come?  Though the archaic language and complex structures of these classic tales present barriers for most middle grade readers, you can make the stories more accessible by pairing them with reader’s theater. And what better a time to do it than Halloween?

All these plays are available on my TeachersPayTeachers and Etsy storefronts. They’re critically-acclaimed. They’re inexpensive. They each come with a comprehension exercise. We’ve also put our three most popular spooky scripts in a splendid Halloween bundle, making them even less expensive! Suitable for reader’s theater, podcast radio drama, or full stage production, they’re perfect for fifth graders and up (plus strong 4th graders)—but get started early to have them well-rehearsed by Halloween.

Happy directing!

Six Awesome Ways to Do RT!

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Click on the image to check out one of our mini-guides to using readers theater in the classroom, or download the complete guide by clicking here. Happy directing!

What Makes a Readers Theater Script Magical?

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It’s time to give the competition some attention. For the last 15 years, ReadAloudPlays.com has been a “secondary market” for all the scripts I’ve published at Scholastic. Writing and staging of these plays has been and will continue to be a passion. The webpage and TpT store, on the other hand, have always been kind of a sideline gig. Now, as I head into retirement from daily classroom instruction, my intent is to push RAP to the forefront of the reader’s theater marketplace. I’m adding new collections (see image), adjusting how performance rights are purchased, and delving more thoroughly into social media and SEO marketing.

Still, wanting to be competitive, I’ve done a bit of scouting, and I’m convinced ReadAloudPlays.com remains the best value in reader’s theater anywhere—not only because we’re less expensive, but also, dare I say, because there’s something magical about our scripts.

I was a mainstay at Storyworks and Scope for 20 years. My editors there frequently told me what made my scripts special:

One, they said my scripts always hit the right reading level and age group. Though a play should push a reader’s vocabulary a bit, a play written for 3rd graders shouldn’t require an eighth grade reading level. Nor should a play for 6th graders sound like something from Daniel Tiger. Amateurs often miss these marks.

Two, because I test nearly all my scripts on students (and will continue to do so in retirement), my scripts appeal to their interests. Working directly with kids all these years has given me a knack for understanding what riles ‘em up. (Visit the DailyPlatypus.org to see for yourself.)

Third, there’s a bit of magic in every play. I’m able to add just the right touches to tug at their emotions or tickle their funny bone. The mayor’s telephone conversations in The Pied Piper, that Goldilocks is a home dec influencer, the strange gibberish spoken by the elves in Shoemaker, or that Otter wears goggles and a snorkel in Toad’s Wild Ride are the Sriracha and glitter that take the plays to the next level.

As for the competition, I encourage you to judge for yourself. ReadingAtoZ.com has a handful of plays, but the site requires an annual fee of $135. You could buy 30 of my plays for that price, each with the license to print a full class set.

ScriptsforSchools.com sells plays for $14.95 and up, teacher packets are $45, and collections run $100.

Readerstheater.com— Has a ton of short plays—some really short. They’re professionally bound, but most are $7 per student, meaning a single play for 7 actors runs $49. No duplication license is included.

Weebly is a great resource for RT—and much of it is free—but there’s trouble afoot. Many of the plays there are copyright violations. For example, unless the author of Miss Nelson is Missing granted copyright (which is unlikely) the play should not exist, nor can it be legally performed for an audience. Another example is when a teacher inadvertently posts a copyright-protected script for their students. When one of our plays shows up on Weebly, our only recourse is to contact the school and file a copyright complaint. It’s awkward for all of us. (We REALLY appreciate teachers who respect copyright.)

PioneerDrama.com is one of the big boys of RT, but they charge big boy prices. Scripts run $10 per student and performance rights are $75 per performance.

And of course there are a variety of other sites with free and paid play scripts, but in our opinion, they usually lack the “magic” of a script from ReadAloudPlays.com.

Finally, there’s AI. That’s right. I know teachers are going to Gemini or ChatGPT and asking them to create a play from a given story. To see what damage AI will cause, I too gave it a try. What I got back was a very short and very bland script with way too much narration (a sure sign of amateurism). No magic there. Asking artificial intelligence to create a script is like asking the microwave to cook all five courses of your Thanksgiving dinner. Yuck. No salt. No pepper. Definitely no Sriracha.

So, as you embark on another school year, take advantage of all the magical, perfectly-seasoned, original, and inexpensive plays from ReadAloudPlays.com. You’ll find all of them on our Tpt storefront. And if you like our plays, please share our link, leave us 5 star reviews, follow us on TpT, and look for us on Instagram, Bluesky, and Facebook.

Thanks, and happy directing!

The Antidote for Spring Fever and the Test Taking Blues

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If you’re school is anything like mine, you’re probably gearing up for standardized testing. For many of us and our kids, it’s the bane of our existence. So, my proposal to you is to use what little time remains in your schedule to have some fun staging a play! It can be as simple as an in-class reader’s theater presentation or as complex as a full stage production (start now for an end-of-the-school year performance!). Whatever the case, at ReadAloudPlays.com we have gobs of plays perfectly suited for spring, including our latest release, Toad’s Wild Ride.

We’ve narrowed Wind in the Willows down to its best, most humorous elements. It shows how Mr. Toad becomes infatuated with motor cars, how his friends attempt to “cure” him, and how he goes on a maniacal drive through the village. Yes, Scene 7 resembles the Disneyland ride! The whole play is full of pratfalls, subtle humor, and grand entrances, making it as kid-friendly as it gets. Enjoy Mole’s innocence, Badger’s stodginess, and Otter’s “charisma,” but don’t forget Ratty and Toad! The play includes stage directions, making it ideal for a full production.

BADGER: Then you don’t promise to never touch a motor-car again?

TOAD:  Certainly not! In fact, I promise that the very first motor car I see, poop-poop, off I go!

Baseball season is underway, so many of your male students—who statistically are more likely to be reluctant readers—will jump at the chance to be in a baseball play.  How Jackie Saved the World depicts the circumstances around Jackie Robinson breaking the “color barrier.” As your students portray Jackie, Pee Wee, and others, a radio announcer calls a more modern game between Derek Jeter’s Yankees and Ken Griffey’s Mariners, gently contrasting the two eras. A peanut vendor and the hot dog man lend narration as they walk through the audience hawking ballpark snacks.

HOT DOG MAN: Despite all that pressure, Jackie led the Dodgers to the World Series and was named Rookie of the Year.  Some said it was the toughest season any ball player has ever endured. Last chance for hot dogs!

PEANUT VENDOR: No doubt the reason today’s game is so exciting is because Jackie had the courage to turn the other cheek. Peanuts! Get your peanuts here!

ANNOUNCER: We’re in the top of the ninth. Two outs and two on and the score tied two to two. The Yankees are taking no chances. With Ken Griffey, Jr. up to bat, they’ve brought in their closer, Mariano Rivera.  Here’s the pitch. . .

Perfect for Earth Day, Nature Talks Back “follows” the madcap adventures of three conifers named Otto, Bill, and Luther as they deal with bark beetle scares, woodpeckers, and centipedes. The story uses campy humor to convey scientific (and non-politicized) facts about the environment.

BILL: It’s not a termite is it? Oh, I hate termites!

LUTHER: No, I don’t think it’s a termite.

BILL: Phew. You had me worried for a minute.

OTTO: Too big for a termite. Looks like some kind of beetle. Does it look like some kind of beetle to you, Luther?

BILL (alarmed): A beetle? Is it a bark beetle?!  Oh no. It’s a bark beetle, isn’t it? I just know it! Get it off of me! Get it off of me!

If maniacal drives, spring training, and talking trees don’t entice you, we also have Peter Rabbit (it seems too young for 5th and 6th graders, but they love doing it—especially when they get to perform it for youngers), Winnie the Pooh (and Tigger too!), and on a more serious note, Juneteenth: Freedom for the First Time. Plus we have dozens more: all original, all human-made, and all with teacher notes, writing prompts, comprehension activities, and the license to print a full class set every year for use in one’s own classroom. Other sites charge dramatically more (no pun intended) for plays with far less originality and pizazz!

Plays teach kids to read purposefully and thoughtfully rather than merely for speed. They always have developmentally-appropriate parts for both your advanced readers and your most reluctant ones. And once parts are assigned, you don’t have to prompt kids to chime in. Best of all, plays are fun.  They’re the perfect antidote for spring fever and those test-taking blues.

Happy directing!

MLK Day and Black History Month Activities

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If you’re like me, you put a bow on the holidays and then breathed a sigh of relief as you headed home for the two week break. But here you are back in class and MLK Day is already upon you!  You have no time to lose when it comes to planning your MLK Day and Black History Month activities!  So, let’s get right to the point of this post: ReadAloudPlays.com specializes in Black History Month and MLK plays.

In 2021, despite all the Covid-related restrictions, the folks at the Palace Youth Theatre in New Hampshire selected a couple of my plays to enact for Black History Month. I’ve posted the video here so that you can take a look. Just click on the image. Whether or not these two plays inspire you to download any of my material, I hope you’ll still share the video with your students. Consider having them watch the production and then read the plays. Or, simply have them follow along with the script while viewing.

The two plays shown are Martin’s Big Dream, which reveals how incidents from King’s childhood inspired his work, and A Simple Act of Courage, which shares the role Ruby Bridges played in integrating America’s schools. They’re both available in my TpT and Etsy stores.

You’ll also find numerous other plays told from the perspective of Civil Right icons like Jackie Robinson, Claudette Colvin, and Sheyann Webb. One of the hallmarks of a quality historical play for kids is that the story is told through the eyes of a child witnessing the events firsthand. These plays all meet that standard. 

A favorite of mine is MLK’s Freedom March, which is told through the eyes of  eleven-year-old Lucy. Her grandmother is dying of cancer, her father is worried about losing his job, and her brother is fired up about The March for Jobs and Freedom, the iconic event where Dr. King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. It’s a powerful play with multidimensional characters backed by King’s awe-inspiring speech.

If you don’t know where else to start, download my free product, Tips for Teaching Marginalized Voices and Traumatic Events.  

Thank you for continuing Dr. King’s work, and happy directing!

A Special Pooh Event!

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Back in the days of the big three networks, a television special like Charlie Brown, Winnie-the-Pooh, or the Little Drummer Boy was a once-a-year event. I remember being mesmerized by those now-old Pooh specials of the 1960’s and 70’s. They introduced us to memorable stories such as Pooh and the Honey Tree and memorable characters such as Eeyore and Tigger. Though releasing my set of Pooh adaptations may not be the kind of event that’ll gather the family in front of the Zenith on a Sunday evening, I none-the-less think it’s still kind of special.

My adaptations include the five best stories from Milne’s 1926 work. I’ve packaged them as five individual “mini-plays.” Each play has just five or six cast members, which means they’re great for small groups. My fifth graders are having a blast with them, and I’m enjoying hearing their interpretations of Milne’s clearly-defined characters. In our case, each small group is staging two plays with the intent of gathering first and second grade kids “in front of the Zenith” some afternoon after winter break. I think your kids will love them too.

A.A. Milne published the original set of Pooh adventures way back in 1926, but even though they’re now in the Public Domain, recreating them as reader’s theater isn’t as straight-forward as it might seem. Disney, for example, still owns the copyright to everything post-1926. That includes Tigger, Pooh’s red shirt, and even the un-hyphenated version of Pooh’s name. Still, these five plays represent the best of Milne’s original work. They’re suitable for third grade and up (a strong group of second graders can probably handle them too), but they promote fluency in upper grades too. They come with comprehension activities, and they’re printed in my kid-friendly, easy-to-read format. Look for Pooh on my TeachersPayTeachers storefront.

Thank you for using Read Aloud Plays! Happy directing!