Help for Spring Fever in the Classroom

Trees and flowers aren’t the only things blossoming right now. Your students, having spent much of the year under your tutelage, have grown and matured and are nearly ready to advance to the next grade—or at least they believe they are. They’re probably getting a bit stir-crazy, too, ready for something more than the same old routine.  Perhaps, too, they’re having the life sucked out of them by standardized tests. It sounds like a good time to liven things up with some truly fun reader’s theater or class plays.  Here are a few of my favorite antidotes for Spring Fever:

Perfect for Earth Day, Nature Talks Back “follows” the madcap adventures of three conifers names Otto, Bill, and Luther as they deal with bark beetle scares, woodpeckers, and centipedes. The story uses campy humor to convey scientific facts about how trees communicate to fend off danger, about misconceptions around what constitutes a “pest,” and about the danger pesticides are to pollinators.

HONEYBEE: Cough, choke. . . has somebody…cough wheeze . . . been using . . . sputter . . . bug spray?

KID (sheepishly): It was just a couple squirts.

HONEYBEE: Cough, wheeze . . . Good thing I only caught a whiff of it. It sent me into a loop-de-loop!

Nature Talks Back is written in four “acts,” which can be presented by a single cast or as four mini-plays.  When my students presented it on stage, they used cardboard sheets to create two-dimensional evergreen trees with cutouts for their faces. Because the trees themselves don’t move, it was a kick teaching kids how to act with their facial expressions.  But even of you don’t have time for a full presentation, NTB makes for a great podcast presentation or just a simple classroom reading on April 22^nd!

How Jackie Saved the World is another great play for Spring. Our Jackie Robinson play depicts the circumstances around Jackie breaking the “color barrier” in the major leagues. 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, which gently contrast the two eras. A peanut vendor and the hot dog man lend narration as they walk through the crowd–your audience.

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. . .

Baseball season is underway all over the globe, 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.

And then there’s Pooh.  Who doesn’t love a Winnie-the-Pooh story? Our RT set includes the best of A.A. Milne’s 1926 collection, all familiar tales such as Winnie-the-Pooh and the Honey Tree:

BEES: Buzz.

CHRISTOPHER ROBIN: Perhaps they think that you’re after their honey.

POOH: It may be that. You never can tell with bees.

BEES: Buzz. Buzz.

POOH: Christopher Robin, have you an umbrella?

CHRISTOPHER ROBIN: I think so.

POOH: I wish you would get it, and walk up and down with it, and look up at me every now and then, and say ‘Tut-tut, it looks like rain.’ I think, if you did that, it would help with the deception we are using on the bees.

Well-suited to reader’s theater or full stage production in third grade and up, these are great for emphasizing delivery and enunciation: nervous Piglet, droll Pooh, gloomy Eeyore, and temperamental Rabbit, for example. The set includes five short plays, each with just a handful of characters. You can split your elementary-aged class into five groups and have each group present one of the plays, or have older students stage a presentation for younger grades.

Of course, we have many other plays with “fun” themes. The Pied Piper, Goldilocks, Barbed Wire, The Nose, Rikki Tikki Tavi, Peter Rabbit, and How the Elephant Got its Trunk are all wonderfully silly yet still build reading fluency while teaching important lessons.  And don’t forget, when you buy one of our plays, you’re not merely buying a set of worksheets; you’re getting an original piece of literature—a professionally written play and the rights to use it year after year. It’s like getting a full class set of your favorite novel along with the other stuff most TpT products provide.  

You’ll find all our plays on our TpT storefront.

Happy directing!

9 Ways to Prep for a Sub

1. Don’t bother! Just ignore that cough. Cancel that meeting. Show up to class with a box of Kleenex and a bottle of DayQuil.

2. Don’t bother. Let the sub fend for him- or herself.

3. Don’t bother. Put a kid in charge instead. Your students can tell the sub where to find all the “worksheets,” the tempera paints, the science chemicals….

4. Stay up late. Use the night before to get all those sub notes written out. Why not? You’re gonna sleep all day tomorrow, right?

5. Go in early. You’ll probably already be up and retching at 4 a.m. anyway.

6. Give ’em more screen time. Plug the kids into to computerized programs that pacify them just like their devices do at home. Or leave a collection of Disney movies and Bill Nye videos on your desk.

7. Copy. Leave the same sub plans your neighboring teacher used last week and hope the sub can adjust.

8. Hope for a snow day.

9. Or, download EZSubPlans. It’s the easiest and most professional way to prepare for a sub. We all know preparing for a sub is tedious and time consuming, but it doesn’t have to be. Just click, print, and relax! Rather than staying up late, showing up sick, or throwing your sub under the bus, give our emergency lesson plans a try. Because they provide your students with quality, standards-based lessons that don’t interfere with your regular instruction or require special materials, EZSubPlans represent good practice. And they’re just a click away. Download your EZSubPlans today so you’re prepared tomorrow!

Whether a classroom teacher, substitute, or administrator, EZSubPlans will provide you with inexpensive, kid-tested plans at the touch of a button. Each EZSubPlans package includes at least seven hours of grade-specific lessons designed to make your next absence easy and worry-free. Classroom teachers wanting to avoid the frustrating and time-consuming process of preparing for an absence and substitute teachers needing back-up material will find everything they need with EZSubPlans. Days are labeled by grade level, but each can be easily adapted to suit one grade level up or down. A fifth grade teacher, for example, could use the lesson plans for grades 4, 5, and 6–that’s six days in all. Each set includes a reading text and comprehension exercise, a spiraling math activity with extensions, a grammar lesson, an art project, a writing task, and even opening and closing activities. Teachers need only to download and print–the sub does everything else.

How much is a stress-free sub day worth? Who can say? How much does a stress-free sub day cost? Just $5 a day with EZSubPlans. Click here for more information about EZSubPlans or click here to preview or purchase at TeachersPayTeachers.

Banned Books, Banned Plays

Censorship always begins with good intentions.

Following the George Floyd protests, heightened concern about cultural sensitivity and traumatic events led TeachersPayTeachers to ban pretty much any reader’s theater or history lesson in which students were challenged to see the event through the eyes of a minority figure. Though well-intended (after all, it’s pretty obvious we shouldn’t be simulating slave auctions in class), TpT’s policy essentially silenced Ruby Bridges, Claudette Colvin, Sheyann Webb, MLK, and other heroes of the Civil Rights Movement. The basis behind the ban was that today’s children shouldn’t be forced to relive the verbal abuse Ruby experienced, or the emotional abuse felt by Sacagawea, or the violence Sheyann witnessed. Never mind that all good literature and historical accounts requires the reader to see it from such a perspective. For example, if Claudette Colvin’s story shouldn’t be shared via my play, “The Girl Who Got Arrested,” it also shouldn’t be shared using Phllip Hoose’s National Book Award-winning biography, Twice Toward Justice.

Yet it must be shared. It’s by seeing Claudette’s story through her eyes that it becomes more than just a blurb and a date in a history book. Claudette’s first-hand account is the primary source that makes the event relevant today.

When TpT deactivated all my plays, I sought help from a friend who serves as the director of the local university’s Center for Cultural Diversity, as well as from Dr. Geneva Craig, someone who actually experienced the tear gas in Selma. These are crazy times, they both lamented, but they helped me re-evaluate my content to make sure I was indeed being sensitive. I made a handful of subtle changes and then re-posted my plays on TpT.

Only to have them deactivated all over again.  

I tried re-posting them as JPEG sheets so that TpT’s content bots couldn’t recognize the text. I removed words like “drama” and “scripts” from my headings and changed “reader’s theater” to RT. To further disguise them, I rebranded them as “Paired Texts.” Nothing worked. TpT deactivated them every time. Ironically, it was during this time that The Palace Youth Theater in New Hampshire, with the help of its local BLM chapter, enacted two of the plays TpT had just banned.  

Fortunately, less-reactionary ideals have prevailed and the new ownership at TpT has since reversed the censorship. I suspect they recognize that educators have school district policies, parent input, and professional training to guide us as to the appropriateness of material. We don’t need TpT to do it for us.

Though I lost hundreds of favorable reviews and thousands of clicks, I’m pleased to say that all my civil rights and American history plays are back on TpT. But given the “crazy times” in which we live, I think it’s important for educators to consider how to appropriately use reader’s theater to teach marginalized voices and traumatic events. Here are a few tips:

Community – Consult with the cultural community associated with the events depicted, bringing in guest speakers where appropriate. If you have students from that particular marginalized culture, seek input from their families before introducing the play.

Sensitivity – Characters in a play should not do anything demeaning toward their culture. While every story—whether in a play format or otherwise—has to have conflict, violent acts should only be referenced by narrators or other characters rather than explicitly acted out. If unsure about how a scene plays out, change it. If you’re still unsure how the content will be received, consider using it only for a discussion-based classroom reading or podcast rather than enacting it “on stage.”

Casting – Don’t let race be the basis for casting parts. Dr. King said he dreamed of a day when we would all be “color blind.” A reader’s theater performance is a good place to practice it.

Policy – It’s important to check your school board’s policy before embarking on any content that might be controversial. Some districts restrict subject matter not explicitly identified within a given grade level’s standards.   

Paired Texts – It’s a good idea to pair reader’s theater content with professionally-published texts. For example, read Ruby Bridge’s book, Through My Eyes while working on the play, A Simple Act of Courage. Not only does the text serve as a vetting agent, it provides material to compare and contrast.

Discussion – No book, play, or video should stand alone. By discussing the content and events depicted, you facilitate understanding. Discussion should happen when introducing a play, while reading specific scenes, and after presenting. Utilizing expert guests enhances those discussions.

Repetition – One of the best reasons to use RT is that if there’s to be a presentation or performance, kids are willing to read plays repetitively. Even a simple reading in front of the class is enough to get kids to read and re-read a script multiple times. The brain science behind repetitive reading suggests students build their fluency at a far greater rate. It holds true with the students’ grasp on the historical events depicted and as well as their ability to empathize with marginalized voices.

Thank you for teaching Black history. Happy directing!

MLK Day is January 15th!

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 break. But here you are heading back to 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 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. 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 products, Tips for Teaching Marginalized Voices and Traumatic Events and Reader’s Theater Teaching Tips, which outlines best practice when using plays.  Be sure to also download the full previews of my plays deemed sensitive or potentially controversial. When unsure about a text, consider using it for traditional reader’s theater, podcast, or a discussion-based in-class reading rather than a stage production. In such cases, the important content still gets taught without running the risk of someone being offended by a “reenactment” of a traumatic event.

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

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

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!

Teaching Kids About Veterans’ Day

If you’d like your students to have some insight into the real meaning of Veterans’ Day, considering downloading “War Stories.” The play originally appeared in my now out-of-print book, Read Aloud Plays: Symbols of America. It’s a somber reminder of the sacrifices made by our war heroes. The play comes with a set of comprehension activities and full reproduction rights, which means the original downloader can copy a full class set for use in his or her classroom every year. Whether read once through, used as a literature circle activity, or enacted on stage, it’s an engaging way to reveal to your students the real meaning of the holiday. Be sure to also check out my other American history plays on TeachersPayTeachers. Happy directing!

The Miracle of Public Education

People like to talk about how there’s a Starbucks on every corner. Whether true or not, the Starbucks brand is impressive. In fact, there are about 16,000 Starbucks locations in the U.S. That’s really incredible!

Yet it’s totally junior varsity compared to America’s Public School System. While we’re all impressed by Starbucks, our School System has around 100,000 locations. One hundred thousand! That means we’re running six schools for every Starbucks. Now think about how much more challenging it is to run a school than a coffee franchise—let alone six schools—or how much more challenging it is to be a teacher than a barista.  

McDonald’s raves about how many burgers it’s served: “Billion and Billions” it says on its signs.  Well, on average, McD’s serves 6 1/2 million burgers per day. That’s an impressive number—unless you compare it to America’s Public School System. We teach 74 million students per day. Seventy-four million! That’s 11 kids for every burger sold. No matter how you pickle it, there’s no comparing frying up a burger to teaching eleven kids how to read, write, and calculate the surface area of a hamburger wafer. 

Yes, I know all these school districts and schools are “independent” entities, but so too is a Starbucks franchise. The fact is, given the enormous task of teaching, feeding, nurturing, and babysitting America’s kids, there is no corporation in the world that can compare with the American Public School System. None. Not even Amazon.

And yet, when surveyed, only 19% of Americans says our school system is doing a good job.  Wait. Stop the press. When those same people are asked about the school system in their own state, suddenly 44% say the schools in their own state are doing well. But hang on yet again! When those people are then asked about their local schools, 79% give them favorable grades. How can this be?

Setting aside media bias and political propaganda (there’s enough of that to cover every Big Mac ever made with a double portion of special sauce), it suggests that the closer one is to the action, the more they appreciate what’s going on. You see, we have a distant view of the school system as a whole, yet because own kids and grandkids go to the local school, we tend to be more aware and appreciative of all the hard work being done there.  At the local level, too, people tend to see the students and their families as accountable, not just the school itself, which leads us to the gist of this post. You see, there’s also research that shows the more involved one is as a parent, the better one’s child will do in school.

Well of course!

When parents read with their kids, check their homework, communicate regularly with the teachers, hold their children accountable, and validate report cards, kids do better.

When parents attend assemblies, chaperone trips, encourage their kids to participate, and insist that vacations be taken during actual vacation periods, kids do better.

Hands-on parenting benefits kids. Having done this gig for more than 30 years, I can attest to the validity of such research. 

Our schools are not without their problems, weaknesses, and failures. But our system of Public Education really is miraculous. Now, allow me to make a small connection to my specialty, reader’s theater.

One way to encourage parent involvement is to use plays. When given a play script to learn, your kids will be more likely to read at home, and their parents will be more likely to read with them. When you use plays, parents will want to be more involved, such as with set building and costuming.  And finally, when kids are going to be on stage, their parents are more likely to show up.

Encourage the parents of your students to be actively involved in the miracle of public school by producing a play. October is a great time to try one of my Gothic classics: The Monkey’s Paw, The Birth-mark, the Mad Scientist’s Daughter, and Tell-Tale Heart.

Happy directing!

Laugh Out Loud Plays

During my twenty years crafting plays for Scholastic, my assignments have nearly always been of a more serious nature.  The plays, usually about American history, civil rights, or classic short story plays, have typically been well-received, and having used all of them with my own students, I know kids thoroughly enjoy enacting them. Secretly, though, I’ve been yearning to write plays that elicit giggles, guffaws, and belly laughs. I know this because most of the recent titles I’ve crafted—these exclusively for my ReadAloudPlays.com brand— are what I would call “Laugh Out Loud Plays.”

Today I’m releasing two new ones, both crafted with student enjoyment foremost on my mind. The Goldilocks story has no doubt been done nearly to death, but I think my version is unique. Imagine Goldi as a television home renovation expert. With the help of her three little pig contractors, she dares to turn the bears’ dreary, worn out space into their “forever home.” If only the bears were in on it!

The second play, Barbed Wire, is a revision of Guy de Maupassant’s classic cautionary tale, A Piece of String. My editors at Storyworks once termed my String play the best thing I’d ever written (to that point in my career, I hope). String is still available on my TpT store, but there’s little doubt it’s more appropriate for middle school and up. It’s a great play, but again— kind of serious. By changing the setting to the Wild West, making the characters animals, and giving those characters a western dialect, I’ve aged it down while “funning it up.”  

My serious plays remain important. Plays are an exceptional format for introducing students to Claudette Colvin, the Birmingham Children’s Crusade, and Juneteenth. Stories from American history, such as that of the Secret Soldier and the burning of the White House, are a lot more memorable when taught through reader’s theater. And though archaic language is often a barrier to understanding classic short stories like The Monkey’s Paw and Tell-Tale Heart, acting them out gives students “a window of comprehension” and a willingness to engage.   

For certain, there are also important lessons embedded in my newer plays, but none more so than that reading, acting, and performing should be a ton of fun.  You and your kids will love enacting The Pied Piper, Nature Talks Back, The Nose, and now Barbed Wire, and Goldilocks. They’re all ideal for kicking off the school year. Take a gander on my TpT storefront. You can also see videos or hear podcasts of many of the plays—as performed by elementary kids—by clicking on the Performances tab.

Happy directing!

Why Your Students Can’t Pay Attention

When LeBron James drains a three-pointer, he gets more than a big chunk of change. He also gets a hit of endorphins. It’s this hit of hormones that makes him want to score again and again. I’m not a neurologist (nor even much of a brainiac), but I’ve read enough about neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin to understand a bit of the brain science behind motivation. What happens in Lebron’s brain is the same thing we all experience when something gives us pleasure or excitement. It’s especially profound in the developing brains of our students. It’s what motivates a kid to learn to read, to pass tests, to win at wall ball, to make friends, and . . . to level up in Fortnite.

Video games, it seems, are designed to stimulate endorphin production. (So too are the algorithms in social media.) It is what makes video games addictive. In a typical video game, the early levels are easy. A player experiences immediate success and therefore an immediate dopamine hit. As the player advances to higher levels, success is harder to come by, but the player sticks with it because their brain is seeking those endorphins. The problem is that getting endorphins in an artificial environment such as a video game is fun and easy, which means it highjacks a person’s motivation to pursue endorphins in the real world. It’s why your video game addict often lacks the work ethic to become a voracious reader, to earn straight A’s, or to drain three-pointers. Small Spaces may be a great book, but it just can’t compete with Roblox.  

Johann Hari spells all this out in his book, Stolen Focus. He’s compiled vast amounts of research to show how addiction to devices is undermining not just education, but society as a whole. It’s a great read—and it’s especially applicable to educators.

Hari contends that today’s kids are being raised by devices from the time they’re born. When our toddlers need attention, instead of actually parenting we merely hand them a tablet. Neither parent nor child learn to deal with whatever the actual problem is because the device serves as a pacifier.

Hari also contends that ADHD is over-diagnosed. Chronic sleep deprivation due to Internet Gaming Addiction (IGA) is the root cause of classroom hyperactivity and focus issues.  Gamers over-stimulate their brain in the evening hours and consequently can’t fall asleep. Rarely do they reach REM sleep. The chronic fatigue manifests itself just like ADHD, but the solution isn’t daily doses of Ritalin; it’s as simple (and as hard) as turning off devices two hours before bedtime.

We’ve all heard the ed gurus telling us for a while now that kids with laptops, tablets, or cell phones will accomplish whole new levels of academic success. The pandemic, though, exposed the many flaws of such digital thinking, yet today, despite plunging test scores, alarmingly low literacy rates, decreasing motivation, and increasing hyperactivity, we’re still subjecting our kids to online platforms–many of which look a lot like video games.

Maybe it’s time we put away all the devices and got back to some fundamentals such as cursive handwriting (it does all kinds of great stuff in the brain), holding actual books in our hands, counting back change, using measuring tape, microscopes, and beakers.

And performing plays.

You can check out Stolen Focus at most any bookseller or public library. (I’m not including a hot link because I want you to know I’m recommending the book solely on its merits, but here’s as honest a review as you’ll ever find.) You can also check out my plays—most of which were originally published by Scholastic—in my TpT store. Consider welcoming kids back to school with my Winnie-the-Pooh reader’s theater. I’ve taken five of Milne’s best stories and crafted them as one-act plays, each with just 4 or 5 actors. Try splitting your class into small groups and have each learn and perform an act during the first week of school! They’ll love it!

Or, I suppose you could instead just assign them some more time on an online reading app.

(Don’t do it! Use a play!)

Happy directing!

Your Juneteenth Playlist

My most poignant play—and it’s perfect for celebrating Juneteenth! Based on actual slave narratives, Freedom for the First Time is historically-accurate, kid-friendly, and comes embedded with comprehension questions and historic photos. It’s the narrative of ten-year old Tyree, a slave during the time of the Civil War. Like many slaves, Tyree believes whatever her masters say. But when Tyree’s brother, Sweet Walter, arrives with a band of Union soldiers to tell her the war is over, she and her family experience their day of Jubilee, the day they know freedom for the first time. Pair it with Days of Jubilee, Patricia and Frederick McKissack’s exceptional non-fiction book about slavery and the Civil War. Click here to see the fantastic things the kids at the Baker Montessori School in Houston did with the script! It’s available on TpT and Etsy, and like all my plays, it includes performance rights. Be sure to also check out Box Brown’s Freedom Crate and Richard Wright & the Library Card. Happy directing!