Character Education Reader’s Theater Scripts | SEL | Fluency | Comprehension

Fluency and comprehension are at the heart of upper grades reading instruction, and these reader’s theater plays all about character education and social-emotional learning skills have been carefully designed to review it all! My students absolutely LOVE reader’s theater, and I love all the benefits they provide.

I set out to create a set of Reader’s Theater that helps students practice their reading comprehension skills, gives them plenty of opportunity for oral reading fluency practice, and provides accountability to both the readers and the audience.

Science of Reading: The science of reading recommends explicit fluency practice with connected texts in the upper grades. These plays are perfect for this!

This set of Character Education Reader’s Theater Plays Includes:

1. 10 High-Interest Reader’s Theater Play Scripts
2. 1 Reader Reflection Page for each play with a focus on exploring a single type of character education skill
3. 1 Audience Reflection Page for each play with a focus on SEL

These Plays include 55 student parts total:

• 7 Plays:  Parts for five students
• 1 Play: Parts for six students
• 2 Plays: Parts for seven students

What makes these plays unique?

• 10 plays with a variety of student roles: This allows for smaller groups to maximize reading time and fluency practice, more collaboration with smaller group sizes, differentiation options, and ensures that everyone has a valuable part in the play. This also makes planning easier for teachers with various class sizes.
• SEL-Based Plays: These plays have been written to focus specifically on helping students explore ten different character education skills
• Reader Tasks for Comprehension: Each play has a one-page reader task that asks students to think critically about the content of their play and gives students a chance to analyze the character education
• Audience Tasks for Comprehension: Hold all of your students accountable with these audience tasks!

Which types of character education/SEL skills are covered in these plays?

• Building Community
• Classroom Rules and Responsibilities
• Self-Acceptance and Accepting Others
• Kindness
• Accountability
• Friendship
• Self-Control
• Problem-Solving
• Optimism
• Assumptions

A Note on SEL: The term “SEL” is not incorporated into this product. Each play focuses on certain personal growth skills.

A Note on Grade Levels: These plays are meant to practice fluency and reading skills with students reading at a 3rd-5th grade level. They have been intentionally written to include text complexities that students will often encounter, including a variety of sentence types, affixes, inflections, interjections, punctuation, expression, etc. Please be sure to view the preview to determine whether or not they are a good fit for your students.

Other readers theater scrips to practice reading skills:

• Seasonal Reader’s Theater Plays – a GIANT Bundle!
• Skill Based Reader’s Theater BUNDLE
• Figurative Language Reader’s Theater Scripts

Need more fluency activities for upper elementary? Here they are!

• Fluency Task Cards for the Whole Year