Description
American War of Independence Guided Reading Play Scripts
American War of Independence Guided Reading Play Scripts. This set of 5 guided reading play scripts plus quizzes on the American War of Independence gives a complete coverage of the key events, along with an explanation of why the war took place in the first place. As with all my group readers, this set comes complete with quizzes, and can be used for guided reading or mini performance – Readers Theater-style.
Sample Texts for American War of Independence
Play 1 Summary of The American War of Independence 1775-1783
Speakers: King George III, Prime Minister George Grenville and General Charles Cornwallis;
George Washington, Samuel Adams and Thomas Paine
Adams: Well, let’s see. There was that small matter of our 13 colonies having to foot the bill for your Seven Years War!
Grenville: And may I remind you on whose behalf we fought that war? Yours, you ungrateful lot!
Cornwallis: Yes, you’d do well to remember it was the French who were the enemy – not us!
Washington: But you won that war! The French had to surrender their lands and look at what you gained?
George III: A huge national debt, that‘s what!
Adams: And one you thought it only right that we should pay!
Grenville: And why not? We still had to defend those frontiers.
Adams: But you didn’t let us go beyond them either!
Play 2 Boston Massacre: March 5, 1770
Speakers: Samuel Adams, John Adams and Crispus Attucks;
Captain Preston, British soldier and Thomas Hutchinson
Attucks: And why not? We were tired of doing everything we were told by a government thousands of miles away. It was time we took matters into our own hands!
Soldier: And you did that all right! That night of 5th March, you practically threw yourself onto my bayonet!
J. Adams: Huh! As if he wanted to die!
S. Adams: Though, what a worthy cause to die for!
Hutchinson: Sure suited your purposes! I don’t know about throwing himself onto the British weapons, but he sure played into your hands!
S. Adams: What do you mean?
Cpt. Preston: So will you deny that this so-called massacre wasn’t just what you had secretly hoped for?
S. Adams: How can you say such a thing?
Soldier: Well, it had to be the best propaganda yet! ‘British soldiers massacre innocent civilians!’
Hutchinson: Though, let’s face it, it was hardly a massacre!
Soldier: Just five killed! I’d call that more of a skirmish!
Play 3 – Boston Tea Party: December 16th 1773
Speakers: Sam Adams, ‘Mohawk Indian’, and American merchant;
Rotch, Governor Hutchinson and British merchant.
Sam Adams: Now there was a party to end all parties! The Boston Tea Party! What a riot!
Rotch: What a waste! Since when was throwing 342 chests of perfectly good tea – into the ocean – a good idea?
British merchant: A wicked waste indeed! To board those ships in such an act of piracy!
Mohawk Indian: Er, look again at my costume, why don’t you? I think you’ll see we were Indians, not pirates!
Hutchinson: Whatever you were! Or rather, whatever you pretended to be! Don’t think for one minute we were fooled by your outfits! Mohawk Indians, indeed!
Rotch: No. More like rebellious good-for-nothing colonists! What a nerve – boarding my ship, the Dartmouth, and then the other two – the Eleanor and the Beaver!
Hutchinson: And all in a mere 3 hours!
British merchant: Ten thousand pounds worth of tea! Dumped! Talk about daylight robbery!
American merchant: And what about your robbery – or that imposed by your government! First the Tea Tax and then giving exclusive rights to that East India Company – for them and them alone to sell tea in the colonies. How were we supposed to make our living?
Play 4 – Lexington and Concord: April 19th 1775
Speakers: Paul Revere, William Dawes and Cpt. John Parker;
General Gage, Major John Pitcairn and Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith.
Pitcairn: But we could never have foreseen those barbaric guerilla tactics used by their soldiers during our retreat to Lexington.
General Gage: They were indeed barbaric! Certainly not the actions of a well disciplined, well trained force like ours!
Cpt. Parker: But firing from behind bushes, trees and walls proved far more effective than your traditional ways. It wasn’t easy for you firing at enemies you couldn’t see!
General Gage: Very ungentlemanly behavior, if you ask me!
Revere: And what was so gentlemanly about firing on our troops at North Bridge?
Pitcairn: Well, what about your men advancing on ours?
Dawes: Only after they’d spotted that smoke from the centre of town and thought you were ransacking Concord!
Lieut. Smith: And who says we fired the first shot anyway?
General Gage: That‘s a question that seems to pop up again and again!
Play 5 – American War of Independence 1775-1783
Speakers: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine
General How, General Cornwallis and George III
Washington: Bad leadership, I’d say!
Howe: Well, you would!
Paine: And why not? He was the greatest leader of the whole war. He ran circles round the lot of you!
Washington: Well, I was rather lucky at times.
Jefferson: Are you sure that was ‘luck‘? Or was it not a certain person’s misjudgements?
Paine: Or shall we say, blunders?
Howe: Oh go on. Rub it in, why don’t you? You weren’t at that Battle of Bunker Hill when I saw my men killed on such a horrible scale.
Jefferson: Did you say Bunker Hill? I think you mean Breeds Hill, don’t you? No wonder he made those ‘iffy’ decisions if he didn’t even know where he was!
Howe: Well, wherever it took place, it made me think very carefully before sending my men rushing in, in the future!
Washington: So you chose to sit back? Mmm. Not a move guaranteed to get you results!
Howe: As it turned out, no. I should have pushed forward. Then perhaps this war would have had a different outcome.
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