A Comprehensive Reader's Theater Solution for Teaching Reading Fluency
Being a Star Makes Reading Fun For You and Your Students!
Playbooks® is the leading social-interactive, role-play reading enrichment program in the nation with its patented Roleplay Reader® format of color-coded dialogue text, and easier and harder roles in the same story. Playbooks® materials have been making a difference in schools since 2001 and provide the most comprehensive tools for effective Reader's Theater implementation.
Playbooks is the leading program for teaching reading fluency.
Playbooks offers:
- Flexible implementation: Use on smartboards, tablets, or original printed versions!
- Unique and Patented with Color-Coded Dialogue Text and Easier and Harder Roles!
- Colorful text to easily follow roles
- Fun Illustrations to keep engagement
- Easier and more difficult roles to allow students of different levels read with confidence and accuracy.
- Balanced roles to allow all readers to speak regularly.
Reader's Theater is a great way to teach a love of reading and increase fluency and comprehension. It is a method of reading a story aloud, like a play, without memorization, props, or a stage. Students are each assigned a character role and read their part with expression, meaning, and enthusiasm. It's best done in small, non-threatening groups of approximately 6 students so students can become practiced at their roles prior to reading/performing in front of a group or audience.
Reader's Theater also meets nearly 50 objectives in the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy, as well as most State Standards!
3000+ PROGRAMS
Used in 3000+ School, Summer and After School Programs
6 MILLION STUDENTS
Positively impacted over 6 million students
130+ TITLES
Over 130 Multi-Leveled Titles to choose from across Grade Levels and SEL Topics
Playbooks® are the ONLY Reader's Theater books that are color coded and multi-leveled. Playbooks® are easier to read and allows teachers to include students of different levels. are easier to read and allows teachers to include students of different levels. This specialized format is protected under U.S. Patent #7,456,834. Only Playbooks Publishing, Inc. can provide you this ultimate format.
Research Based
Research shows four repeated readings sufficiently improve reading fluency. Most traditional texts can NOT hold students’ attention for up to four separate readings. Reader’s Theater truly engages students and is the most popular form of “repeated guided oral reading”, creating a fun experience for students and teachers! Check out the study for our Playbooks® program.
Multi-Leveled
Engage readers of multiple reading levels, with easier and harder roles in the same story. Readers of all levels can read aloud with confidence and accuracy. Playbooks® multi-leveled character roles are edited using a proprietary leveled word dictionary and strict sentence structure guidelines, so students achieve ultimate success and fluency among their peers. We do not simply assess what an author has written to determine what level the text might be; we actually edit and level the roles!
Color-Coded
Each reader’s dialogue text, not just the name in the margin, appear in a different color, making it easier for students to follow their character roles, quickly see where their part starts and stops and how much they will read, and easily be prepared for their next turn to speak. This leads to increased reading confidence and involvement. Color does not represent the level of the role, however, so that students do not know they've been assigned an easier or harder role.
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A Suite of Reading Solutions for All Grades

READER'S THEATER JR. ® (K-2)
Reader's Theater, Jr.® is a unique series of six important early childhood topic sets, each of which includes one full-length reader's theater story and five mini-stories which are designed to be read first and help prepare young readers for the full-length story (along with additional materials). Topics include Counting, Alphabet, Weather, Healthy Foods, Exercise, Community Helpers and More
PLAYBOOKS
Our core set of titles, range of topics, range of grade levels.
- All multi-leveled, and color coded
- Comes in multiple different formats


Passengers: Curriculum-Based Reader’s Theater
Curriculum-Based Readers Theatre (CBRT) incorporates the basics of traditional reader’s theatre— actors reading aloud from a script, performing without costumes, props, or stage movement. But instead of scripts that are based on stories or literature, CBRT scripts use school content areas as their topics—science, math, and social studies—dramatizing the content to make it more interesting and memorable and to inform and entertain.