Thanksgiving Reader’s Theater Scripts for Practicing Reading Fluency

Fluency and comprehension are at the heart of upper grades reading instruction, and these Thanksgiving 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 with the 'Seasonal Reader's Theater Bundle' - a set of Readers Theater plays for every occasion!

This set of THANKSGIVING Reader’s Theater Plays Includes:

1. 8 High-Interest Reader’s Theater Play Scripts with a Thanksgiving theme
2. 1 Reader Reflection Page for Each Play with a focus on a different key reading skill
3. 2 Audience Reflection Pages for Each Play with a focus on a key reading skill
4. Reader’s Theater Self-Reflection Rubric

These Thanksgiving Plays include 34 student parts total:

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

Which key reading skills are covered in these Thanksgiving plays?

• Cause and effect
• Character traits
• Compare and contrast
• Fact and opinion
• Inferencing
• Perspective and Point of View
• Story elements
• Sequencing

Each skill has one play that focuses on the given skill

What topics are included?

• Thanksgiving Around the World
• Thanksgiving Dinner
• Family and Dinner Guests
• Turkey Trot
• Black Friday
• Canadian Thanksgiving

What makes these plays unique?

• 8 Thanksgiving 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 practice key reading 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 focuses on a single key reading skill.
• 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, expressions, 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 and seasons, are on the way!

Looking for more engaging ways to practice key reading skills? I’ve got you covered!

• Reading Skills Choice Boards
• Using Pictures to Teach Reading Skills
• Camp Conundrum - A Reading Project

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

• Reading Skills Choice Boards
• Using Pictures to Teach Reading Skills
• Camp Conundrum - A Reading Project