Celebrate Our Unsung Heroes

In case you weren’t aware, March was Women’s History Month. Celebrating the contributions of women to history, though, needn’t be limited to a single month. Nor should it be limited to the same handful of heroines we’re all familiar with. In fact, given that the heroic actions of women often went unnoticed or unrecorded, one wonders how many sacrifices we’ve never heard about.

One heroine who was nearly forgotten by history is Sybil Ludington. Sixteen-year-old Sybil is credited with riding 40 miles on horseback to muster the militia when the British invaded Danbury, Connecticut, in 1777. Her story, which had been passed down within her family for nearly 100 years, wasn’t recorded until 1880. My play about Sybil gives students an impression of the perils of living in the American colonies at a time when neighbors–some Patriots and others Tories–might be violently opposed to one another. It speaks directly to issues of equality and gives students plenty to discuss in the way of character traits such as determination, independence, and work ethic.

The play was originally published in the Sept. 2015 issue of Scholastic’s Scope magazine. It was so well received that it was reprinted a year or so later in Storyworks. It’s now available for the first time on TpT, so I invite you to check it out. I also want to encourage you to pair it with my other plays from the Revolutionary War, including The Secret Soldier and Betsy Ross: Fact or Fiction, both which examine the contributions of women.

From Sheyann Webb to Christa McAuliffe, from Molly Pitcher to the recently deceased Linda Brown, the impact of heroic women on American history has been profound. Let’s celebrate that year ’round!

Happy directing.

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See the Movie. Stage the Play!

Take advantage of high student interest in the Peter Rabbit movie by enacting my read aloud play script, The Tale of Peter Rabbit. It includes the play script, the original text in an easy-to-read short story format geared toward intermediate and middle-grade students, and several comprehension activities—seventeen pages in all.
Peter Rabbit was the first play I submitted to Storyworks. Though for various reasons it never made it into print, it led to my now twenty-year relationship with Scholastic. One reason it didn’t see the pages of the magazine is that the Peter Rabbit story tends to be “aged-down.” But I can attest, every fifth grade class I’ve ever had has loved enacting this play, and now that it’s hit mainstream movie screens, there’s no question your 3rd-6th grade students will love it too!
The reviews for the Peter Rabbit film are mixed—as if that’s anything to be surprised about. But elementary and early middle school students are attending and enjoying it. Grab their attention while it’s hot and download the Peter Rabbit play today!

Reader’s Theater for Presidents’ Day

Here are two plays in one package with which to celebrate and teach about Presidents’ Day. The first, President’s Day Dream, lets your actors portray several well-known presidents from history as a current “student” day dreams about becoming president herself. She, of course, sees only the glamour of the job, while presidents such as William Howard Taft tell her about the hard work, the constant criticism, and the tough decisions. The play gives students an intimate look at the personalities of each president while showing your kids “what it takes to be a good one.”

Argument at Mount Rushmore, meanwhile, imagines the four faces on the monument can actually talk. They celebrate their accomplishments while revealing their own distinct personalities: the stoic Washington, the underappreciated Jefferson, and the wise-cracking Lincoln contrast the bravado of a bullish Roosevelt. A great line in the play comes when Roosevelt says to Lincoln, “We’d have made a great tag team, Abe!” It’s a fun play to read and enact. Both plays provide students with some historical background about the presidency and democracy, and both come with standards-based comprehension activities and support material–a perfect fit for your Presidents’ Day instruction. Both plays originally appeared in my book, Read Aloud Plays: Symbols of America (2003, Scholastic). Visit my storefront at TeachersPayTeachers to preview or purchase.

Happy directing!

Try These Scripts for Black History Month

In addition to all the MLK plays featured in my last post, here’s more great reader’s theater for Black History Month. Like nearly all my plays, these have been previously published in places such as Scholastic News and Storyworks, so they’ve been professionally vetted to meet the highest standards. They also come with comprehension activities that are designed to be straight-forward and easy to use. And because I use all these plays and activities in my own classroom, they’ve been kid-tested. To preview or purchase, just click on a cover and you’ll be taken to my storefront at TeachersPayTeachers.

The Girl Who Got Arrested tells the story of Claudette Colvin, the first person to be arrested for refusing to relinquish her seat on a Montgomery city bus. Claudette was a teenager at the time and was deemed “unfit” to represent the Civil Rights cause, which makes her story that much more compelling. Pair the play with Philip Hoose’s book Twice Toward Justice for even greater engagement.  The Library Card, meanwhile, can be paired with original text from Richard Wright’s autobiography Black Boy (for mature students) or the picture book entitled Richard Wright and the Library Card by William Miller (younger students). The right to possess a library card helps depict the value of reading. Box Brown’s Freedom Crate tells the true story of Henry “Box” Brown, the slave who mailed himself to freedom inside a wooden crate. This is particularly fun to enact on stage (see my post “Why You Need a Cardboard Box for Black History Month“).

My Jackie Robinson play is another especially fun play to enact on stage. It features a peanut vendor and a hot dog man narrating the story from the audience as they sell their imaginary snacks at a Yankees game. And don’t underestimate the significance of Jackie’s struggle to the Civil Right Movement. The sports world has historically set the tone for progress when it comes to social justice. Freedom for the First Time is about the end of the Civil War, the “Day of Jubilee,” when slaves knew freedom for the first time. I consider it my most beautiful play. Finally, Spies & Rebels does not include any African-American characters, yet it’s depiction of Pinkerton agents working to save Lincoln is a nice compliment to your African-American Month curriculum.

Be sure too to peruse my numerous original scripts about MLK, as well as all my plays at ReadAloudPlays.com and my storefront at TeachersPayTeachers.

Happy directing!

Better Work Stories

I appreciate the folks at Teach.org. Their mission is to recruit future teachers to a profession that is apparently not keeping up. “America faces a shortage of 60,000 teachers per year—a number that’s expected to grow to 110,000 by 2021,” states their website. To combat this, they develop ad campaigns such as “Teachers Have Better Work Stories.” (Their “I Dare You” commercial is particularly inspiring.)

What they’re saying is that our profession doesn’t offer the kind of perks one gets in the business sector. We don’t get Christmas bonuses, company cars, or (despite what the public believes) paid vacations. Our health benefits are slowly drying up, and for the majority of newbies entering the profession, retirement benefits seem to be a thing of the past. But what we DO get is better work stories to share with our friends. Telling about the third grader who barfed on your shoe is apparently better than chatting up the accounting error Gus made in Shipping & Receiving. Now that’s a perk worth promoting! How funny.

If this supposed teacher shortage continues, perhaps we’ll see more benefits come our way in the future. Until then, join me in appreciating the one true perk of teaching: the kids who inspire all those stories.

May 2018 bring you many a good story!

A Well-Paced Play

My class of fifth graders staged a nifty trio of plays recently. Eric paced about the stage as the insanely villainous narrator in The Tell-Tale Heart, Jacqueline put on her best 1930’s gangster dialect, performing the roll of safe-cracking Jimmy Valentine in A Retrieved Reformation, and Emilee engaged us with a delightful French accent in The Necklace. Though staging these plays can be hard work for the teacher, the rewards are gargantuan. Some good props—a cardboard safe for the gangster play, for example—help turn the plays into memorable performances, but over the twenty-plus years of doing this stuff, I’ve come to the conclusion that for young actors, there are five areas of greatest importance.

Projection: I’m not a believer in microphones. Instead, I want students to “fling” their voice into the audience, to “almost yell” their lines—and by way of example, I admit to myself doing a lot of shouting to help get them there.

Attention: Students often get lost in the performance, becoming spectators instead of performers. My best performers pay attention to the script so they come in on cue. We repeat whole scenes over and over again until performers recognize their cues without thinking.

Characterization: Memorable performances come from actors who use dialect, accents, and inflection to put personality into their parts. Jacky’s gangster dialect, Emiliee’s French accent—they brought their plays to life!

Enunciation: I’m painfully aware of my own tendency to mumble—especially when in a rush—and I bet you’ll agree your students have the same issue. We want our kids to slow down and speak crisply. This flies in the face of so-called “fluency standards” in which success is measured by words per minute, so you might have to do some “unteaching” to get your kids to enunciate properly on stage.

Direction: My kiddos think it’s funny when I say, “No one wants to see your rear end!” But said often enough, it does the trick to get kids facing the audience, a critical element when acting.

To help teachers turn kids into good actors and even better readers, I’ve put together a little poster called “5 Stage Acting Hacks for Kids.” It’s available for free on my TeachersPayTeachers site. If you like mnemonic devices, it uses the “PACED” acronym to help students remember the five elements. You can print it as an 8 ½ b 11 handout in color or a low-ink versions, or you can enlarge version #3 by 154% to create an 11×17 mini-poster.

Happy directing!

How to Swipe a Free Play Part 2

A few weeks ago I blogged tongue-in-cheek about swiping reader’s theater scripts through nefarious means, so I thought I’d follow it up with a legitimate opportunity to grab some free reader’s theater while simultaneously honoring America’s veterans. I’ve repackaged my play “War Stories,” which originally appeared in my now out-of-print book, Read Aloud Plays: Symbols of America, and am presenting it free from now until Veterans’ Day on November 11^th. It 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. It’s an engaging way to reveal to your students the real meaning of the holiday. Happy directing!