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 22nd!
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!
Mackowiecki Lewis 