Cause and Effect Reader’s Theater Scripts | Fluency | Science of Reading

Fluency and comprehension are at the heart of upper grades reading instruction, and these cause and effect reader’s theater plays have been carefully designed to review both! 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.

➡️➡️ SAVE BIG when you buy the whole 'Skill Based Reader's Theater Bundle' a set of Readers Theater plays for 7 different key reading skills.

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 Cause and Effect Reader’s Theater Plays Includes:

1. 9 High-Interest Reader’s Theater Play Scripts
2. 1 Reader Reflection Page for Each Play with a focus on cause and effect
3. 2 Audience Reflection Pages for Each Play with a focus on cause and effect
4. Reader’s Theater Self-Reflection Rubric

These Plays include 34 student parts total:

• 2 Plays: Parts for 2 students
• 2 Plays: Parts for 3 students
• 2 Plays: Parts for 4 students
• 2 Plays:  Parts for 5 students
• 1 Play: Parts for 6 students

What makes these plays unique?

• 9 cause and effect plays with a variety of student roles included: 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 a wide variety of class sizes.
• Skill-Based Plays: These plays have been written to focus specifically on helping students examine the different cause and effect relationships within their play
• 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 cause and effect in their plays
• Audience Tasks for Comprehension: Hold all of your students accountable with these audience tasks!

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.

More scripts, covering more essential reading skills, are on the way! Here's what's already available:

• Story Elements Reader's Theater Plays
• Inferencing Reader's Theater Plays
• Sequencing Reader's Theater Plays
• Seasonal Reader's Theater Plays - a GIANT Bundle!

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

• Fluency Task Cards for the Whole Year
• FREE Oral Reading Fluency Checklist

Looking for lessons and slides on how to teach Cause and Effect? Look no further! We have them here!