FAQ & Contact Us

Reader's Theater 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 parts with expression, meaning, and enthusiasm which rapidly improves reading fluency. Plays inherently come with built-in strategies to help students read better as they work more closely with the text to interpret and project meaning. Taking on a character role in a non-threatening small group setting helps build student reading confidence.

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. 

These has been a lot of research across organizations on how to effectively teach students to read. The U.S. Department of Education said in its second edition of Put Reading First, that repeated and monitored oral reading most effectively improves reading fluency and overall reading achievement. 

The National Reading Panel said in its Teaching Children to Read study that fluency is the crucial bridge between word recognition and comprehension. And repeated oral readings are a key method for building fluency in all students. Playbooks® are created to keep students engaged over multiple readings. 

Additionally, a Loyola University study shows that word recognition and reading comprehension improves 27% when text is presented in color compared to bold text, and 35% when presented in color compared to contrasting fonts.  With our patent, Playbooks® has the only materials that can be color-coded and multi-level.
In a study with CentroNia’s Community Engagement and Education Department in Washington, D.C., Playbooks® have seen proven outcomes of 85% increase over a 6-week period.

You can place an order via our website or contact our team of specialists at info@readerstheater.com or call us at 1-800-375-2926. We are happy to discuss your options to find the right solution for your classroom. We can provide quotes, and accept Purchase Orders for both our print and virtual options. 

Yes, absolutely. You can contact our team of specialists at info@readerstheater.com or call us at 1-800-375-2926. We are happy to discuss your options to find the right solution for your classroom and provide a quote for you. You can access our price list here.

Yes, we accept purchase orders. You can view the products on line here, or via our price and order list here and W9 here, and send your purchase order to info@readerstheater.com.

We offer print and virtual resources for PK through grade 12. Our product sets include Reader's Theater Jr® , created for PK-Grade 2 covering 6 important early children topics. We offer over 100+ print and virtual stories for K-Grade 8, with virtual books for Grade 9-12.

We have have assembled collections of the top 10 favorite Playbooks® stories in three grade spans (K-2, Grade 3-5 and 6-8) into "Bundle Kits" along with everything you need for a successful Reader's Theater program. These kits are ideal for a 10-week reading program as they allow every student to have the opportunity to read 10 different plays, read 10 different roles and repeat them 3-4 times to build fluency, comprehension, confidence and speaking skills.

These books also include multiple themes that help students with their SEL including topics such as forgiveness, compromise, cooperation with others, responsibility, courage, friendship and more!
We also offer our PASSENGERS series, a dynamic and creative role-play reading series with multiple scripts that transport students through learning important topics in Math, Science, and Social Studies in the most fun and engaging way. These are offered in K-2 and Grades 3-5. 

The majority of our books are available in print and virtual formats. Our Grade 9-12 titles are only available in the virtual format currently. You can access both formats from the same product page and choose the relevant variant (i.e. Print Small Group Set, Print Single Copy or Virtual Copy). Please note that due to the copyright, virtual copies can only be used at one site.

Check our Shipping & Handling Page here for full details.

If you order online, you will be able to see the shipping price within your shopping cart. If you order via a quote, we will include it as a line item in the quote. Please note we only ship print books in the U.S. but our virtual options are great for international use. 

For virtual products, you should receive a link to your purchases via email within 24-48 hours after purchase. If you don't receive the link after that timeframe, please check your junk mail. If not email us at info@readerstheater.com and we will resend. ​For print titles, we will ship within 1-4 business days from our warehouse. We typically ship UPS ground. If you would prefer faster shipping options or need the materials by a certain date, we will be happy to provide a quote for expedited shipping and/or handling. 

If you order online, you will receive an initial email confirming your order. If you order with a PO, we will respond to let you know we'll received it and are processing it. Once your order is shipped, you'll receive another email with your UPS tracking number. You'll be able see the expected delivery date and time. If your order is being received by someone other than you, please let them know to expect it as we are not responsible for items after delivery. ​Due to the virtual nature of our titles, we do not offer refunds or exchanges on our virtual titles. For print books, for any missing or damaged books, we will ship replacements at no charge. If you are unhappy with your order, please contact customer service at info@readerstheater.com or 1-800-375-2926. 

Damages and issues - Please inspect your order upon reception and contact us immediately if the item is defective, damaged, or if you receive the wrong item, so that we can evaluate the issue and make it right.

Exceptions / non-returnable items - Certain types of items cannot be returned, like virtual titles, and custom products (such as special orders or personalized items). Please get in touch if you have questions or concerns about your specific item. Unfortunately, we cannot accept returns on sale items or gift cards. 

 

Refunds - We will notify you once we’ve received and inspected your return, and let you know if the refund was approved or not. If approved, you’ll be automatically refunded on your original payment method. Please remember it can take some time for your bank or credit card company to process and post the refund too.

In order to assist teachers and facilitate the assigning of roles for Reader’s Theater small group reading, Playbooks, Inc. has developed a simplified series of reading levels. To download a PDF, click here to compare Playbooks® levels with other popular reading scales such as Lexile, DRA, Reading Recovery and Pinnell/Guided Reading.

It's not just each of the titles, we've developed story-specific Cross-curricular Worksheets to go beyond each story into the areas of Math, Science, Social Studies, Vocabulary, Phonics, English Language Arts, etc. Find additional exercises and activities to go with each of our Playbooks® Stories here.

While there are a number of ways to implement a Reader's Theater program, we recommend a 10-week rotation which leverages the practice of "Repeated Guided Oral Reading" (i.e. four repeated readings). You can see the training for it on our Implementation page.
A 10-week reading program allows every student to have the opportunity to…
* Read 10 different plays in a small non-threatening group
* Read 10 different roles and repeat them 3-4 times each to quickly build reading fluency
* Perform 1 play in front of other peer groups
* Watch 9 other peer groups perform 9 other plays
* Build reading fluency, comprehension, confidence, and speaking skills
We have created our 10 story multi-story kits to help facilitate this.

We know the success of any program depends on effective implementation so we offer an array of implementation tools along with our Playbooks® titles to help you get started in the classroom. You can access them here. There you can find a Quick Start Implementation video, plus videos on proper role assignment, our suggested 10-week rotation program, plus our Quick Start guide, our Teacher's Guides and lots of other forms to use to help get started.

Our  Playbooks® certification is in development.

 

For those educators who are funded by Children's Trust, The Children's Trust is handling the training now. Our Playbooks® Reader's Theater Implementation webinars have now been made into a course in Trust Academy and you can access them directly via Children's Trust.
To access them, do the following:

-Open your account in Trust Central

-Click into Trust Academy LMS

-In the Course Catalog, look in The Children's Trust Courses category or search for Playbooks

-Watch all three videos and pass the course to earn your certificate

If you have any questions on the Children's Trust Certifications, please ask your program manager.