Short plays for kids

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ESL forum > Teaching material > Short plays for kids

Short plays for kids

Emy Lee

Short plays for kids

Hello everyone,

I am looking for two short plays for my 4th graders. They are beginners and speaking is still an issue for some of them, so I need something simple with short lines for each character. The problem is that I need plays with at least 28 characters.

Could anyone suggest some titles or web sites?

Thank you so much for your help. ^^

15 Mar 2013

Carolinac165

Hi, I �ve had the same problem so I had to write my own play. I �m going to give you some ideas and if you want to I can send you the plays via email.

Well, last year I had the same problem and I wrote a play on my own. Basically, I focused on the end of the year and the beginning of a new year. I had on stage 12 students acting as the MONTHS: each of them had to introduce themselves and talked about what they brought with them. For example, January brought the summer and the vacations, February the carnival, March the beginning of classes, etc.The play started with a student acting as the Old Year (an old man) and another student as the New Year (a child). The Old Year had to introduce the New Year to the months. At the same time, I had four students acting as narrators who marked the different scenes in the play. So I had 18 students on stage.

At the very beginning, I had included the four seasons, Santa Claus and some elves, the Easter Bunny, and some other characters but some of my student couldn �t participate so I had to do with the ones I had. Their lines were short and consisted mainly of introductions.

Another play that I wrote was one related to Christmas but you can adapt it to other celebrations. The play goes around a group of forest elves who wanted to give a present to humankind for Xmas. Each of them represented a different feeling or emotion like respect, tolerance, love, friendship, etc. They argued over what was the best present and there was an ancient spirit who put an end to the fight. They end up giving love as a present because it summarizes all the other feelings. The lines were a little bit more complicated but they did it perfectly.

Finally, this is just an idea because I haven �t written the play yet. I think is going to be my end-of-year play for this year. The play goes like this: the Music Spirits are participating in a contest to decide which is the best music style. So you have all the different styles of music represented by the children: rock, rap, tango, cuarteto, salsa, etc. The children should be dressed up according to the music style they represent. There �s a jury that consists of several member who debate and argue. There �s also an audience and they are the ones who conclude that all the music styles are the best and that there isn �t one that �s better than the other.

As you can see, my idea is always to teach some values and to make my students be aware of the message we �re trying to give. An important fact, my students are between 7 and 10 years old and their mother tongue is Spanish.

Take care!! :)

15 Mar 2013

cunliffe

Carolinac, this sounds brilliant! I was thinking of doing a whole school assembly with my beginners � group and I love the idea of the Music Spirits. Can I use it to write my own play?

Lynne

16 Mar 2013

evafer

Carolinac, I love your ideas! Thanks so much for sharing them!

Saludos, eva

16 Mar 2013

jhansi

wonderful creative ideas.I can add one more. can do with flowers or trees or animals. For little ones you can do "fingers". Each one will proudly say about their greatness but at the end they all agree,with out anyone support, they cannot become great.So unity and cooperation needs for any one �s survival.

ESL has become my day! I thank all of you and ESL family for the great support given to my ideas and work sheets. I am sure without you, I wouldn�t have reached the magic number 100000.

I thank all the teachers and other members for their creative templates and work sheets.Big THANK YOU!

16 Mar 2013

edrodmedina

When I was a kid we put on an adaptation of Marcia Brown �s "Stone Soup". You have 3 main characters and lots towns people and the dialog was not complicated. If you �re familiar with the book you can easily adapt it. There might even be something on the net. Ed