Readers Theater: More on Format

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As many of you know, I’m busy right now writing a readers theater script for the educator’s guide I’m creating for the release of my upcoming MG nonfiction book, JANE AUSTEN FOR KIDS.

In my last post about this, we talked about format.

The format of the actual text of the play is very important. This is what the kids will be reading and following along as they read the play aloud. (Unlike other plays that are acted out, readers theater plays are intended only to be read out loud. No acting skills needed!)

I try to make my readers theater scripts that I self-publish in educator’s guides as companions to my books or that I sell individually appear visually appealing to the kids who will be reading them. So I always like to start out with some sort of an interesting picture or photograph.

These days you can find lots of royalty free images on the internet. I found this one about an English fox hunt because it will tie into the story I’m telling in my play.

Just below the image, I add in the title of my play. It’s centered on the page.

Below that, you can see that I start Scene 1 with a little description of where the scene is taking place.

Then I start the read-aloud script.

I align the characters’ names along the left, add a colon, and then indent so all the read-aloud script starts at the same tab.

For this readers theater, I’m actually writing it while I’m typing on the computer. So I’m formatting it as I write the first draft of the story. This is helping me keep the format correct as well as pace the amount of dialogue I’m giving each character.

I’m trying not to give any character more than about 3 lines of text because I want the kids to get equal chances to speak.

Here is how that looks on the second page of my script so far.

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