Readers Theatre for African American History »

JEFF SANDERS is a fourth grade teacher in California.

NANCY I. SANDERS is a freelance writer who has written over seventy books for teachers and students. Her most recent titles include Pocket Pals, Engage the Brain Games, and D is for Drinking Gourd.

Readers Theatre for African American History features a collection of twenty scripts covering a comprehensive span of history from Africa before the transatlantic slave trade through current events in our nation. In participating in these scripts, students will listen to storytellers from Africa and share the rich oral tradition about wealthy explorers who came to the Americas from Africa before Columbus. They'll experience such events as Emancipation Day on the South Carolina Sea Islands, the founding of the North Star by Frederick Douglass, and the extraordinary 1939 Lincoln Memorial concert by Marian Anderson. They'll attend an imaginary political convention where they'll meet our nation's first five African American U.S. Senators, including Senator Barack Obama. African American history is rich with opportunities for creative learning. This book brings them alive. Grades 4-8

School Library Journal

The selections here cover African-American history from before the slave trade to modern-day events. The format encourages shy youngsters as well as class clowns to participate. It improves reading skills and increases vocabulary while using cooperative learning. A preface offers suggestions for preparing, performing, and evaluating the scripts. For each script, the authors include a number of possible extension activities, background on the story, ideas for projects, and references to books for additional information. Some of the scripts have only a few characters and others could involve an entire classroom. Most of them are very short, just a few pages. There are a few long speeches, but most of the character parts are weighted equally. While the dialogue is usually clear, some characters seem to just spew facts and dates, which may be boring to some children. A useful purchase for any middle school library, speech or drama classroom, or classroom that studies history or storytelling.-Terrilyn Fleming, Colby Public Schools, KS