While I love a good read aloud so that my students have the opportunity to hear fluent reading, I also want my students to work on fluent projection and inflection. In addition, I want to provide opportunities to hear my students read. Whether you are remote or teaching in-person, reader’s theater scripts are an amazing tool to enhance and connect your middle school ELA readers. Fluency, comprehension, context clue word work, and written responses can all be enhanced through the implementation of reader’s theater.
I have created several reader’s theater scripts and toolkits to help my students practice their skills. The key is to offer scripts that they can relate to as “big kids” in middle school. The reader’s theater resources featured below are my favorite scripts to use at these grade levels.
The Cafeteria Catastrophe is about a student that is planning to run for student body president of her school’s student council, but makes a bad choice by stealing from the school’s cafeteria which results in a few undesirable consequences. Your middle grade readers will love the chance to transform into the characters and determine what happens to Clara. See full description on TPT.
This script focuses on a group of students looking forward to the annual school-wide food drive to support the City Food Pantry. The problem is that the students are more focused on bringing in the most items so they can win an ice cream and pizza party, not focus on the act of giving. See full description on TPT.
These four, one-page, three-character scripts with corresponding reader response questions will give your students the chance to: work on fluency, enhance comprehension, and learn about the fable genre in a FUN way! Fable scripts included are The Fox and the Crane, The Fox and the Cat, The Wolf and the Crane, and The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse. See full description on TPT.
Brennan is a student that is putting forth minimal effort into his art project. His colored pencils take notice and decide that enough is enough, either he put forth more effort and consider their suggestions, or they may not return. Your students will have a BLAST acting out this hilarious script. See full description on TPT.
Your students will love reading about the characters of Parkersburg Elementary School and how their Halloween traditions and celebrations were cancelled, then reconsidered due to some thoughtful 6th grade brain power. See full description on TPT.
