Description
Meet the Presidents Guided Reading Play Scripts
Meet the Presidents Guided Reading Play Scripts is a set of 7 guided reading scripts (plus quizzes) goes up to President 45 – one Donald Trump – whose inauguration was of course on January 20th!
Interesting to learn about Trump’s predecessors! And not forgetting their equally interesting wives – in First Ladies group of guided reading scripts.
Meet the Presidents Guided Reading Play Scripts Sample Texts from Meet the Presidents!
Play 1 The First 6 Presidents (War of Independence)
Speakers: George Washington, John Adams (1), Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe and John Q. Adams (2)
Washington: ‘Father of my country’ – that’s me!
Jefferson: And me! Don’t forget it was me who actually wrote that great Declaration of Independence!
Adams (1): With a little help from me too!
Madison: And not forgetting my vital role. It was us four who put together that US Constitution, making sure our new republic lasted.
Monroe: And nobody will ever forget my part, either! I applied the finishing touches, with my Monroe Doctrine, making sure other countries realised that we, the United States of America, would no longer tolerate any foreign interference in our internal affairs.
Adams (2): So I guess that just leaves me to blow my own trumpet! That is, if anyone can actually hear mine over the din of theirs!
Play 2 Presidents 7 – 12 (Between Independence and Civil War)
Speakers: Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Harrison, John Tyler, James Polk and Zachary Taylor
Taylor: All work and no play! No wonder you were dead within 3 months of leaving office!
Polk: So would you have been if you’d worked as hard as me!
Harrison: At least you lived to see your achievements! Not only was I the first president to die in office, but I was only there 31 days! I have the dubious honour of holding the record for serving the shortest term in office, too!
Taylor: Well, mine wasn’t much longer. I died within 2 years of becoming president … and after 40 years in the army! Now where’s the justice in that?
Jackson: All this talk of death!
Van Buren: All very fine for you! You lived until you were 78!
Jackson: But nobody could say I didn’t live life on the edge!
Play 3 Presidents 13 – 18 (Civil War)
Speakers: Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses Grant
Lincoln: Course, there is that little thing called conscience. And that was certainly something none of you southerners had in any large measure!
Johnson: With one exception, of course! Yes, I was the only southern senator who stood by the Union, when those 11 southern states split to become the Confederacy.
Grant: A brave and noble stand! War brings out different kinds of courage in men, and your kind of courage was every bit as great as my soldiers’.
Buchanan: Foolish man! All very fine sticking up for your principles during the war, but what about afterwards? Who thanked you then?
Lincoln: Sometimes you have to stand up for a cause higher than yourself. But then you Confederates would never understand that!
Johnson: How could any human ever defend the enslavement of another?
Pierce: You sound just like Lincoln! What were his famous, but somewhat misguided, words? “I cannot bring myself to believe that any human being lives who would do me any harm”. Oops! He got that one a bit wrong!
Play 4 Presidents 19 – 25 (Corruption)
Speakers: Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Chester Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison and William McKinley
McKinley: Lucky there were some men of conscience around to clean out the filth!
Hayes: And there was plenty of that! Someone had to set an example!
Garfield: And that would be you, and your ‘Lemonade Lucy’!
Hayes: Careful what you say about my lady wife. Just because she never allowed a drop of alcohol in the White House!
Garfield: A right bundle of fun! What parties you must have had! Wild or what?
Hayes: Easy enough for you to mock the ways of the righteous!
Arthur: Maybe we need to remind ourselves, at this stage, of your early nickname!
Harrison: “His Fraudulency”, wasn’t it?
Play 5 Presidents 26 – 31 (World War I and Great Depression)
Speakers: Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover
Hoover
(shouting): Now wait a minute! I wasn’t born a millionaire, you know! I started with nothing and got where I did from sheer hard work!
Wilson: And all credit to you for that! But how could you possibly think the problem would just drift away?
Roosevelt: How could you sit back and hope it would just magically disappear?
Harding: Sounds like taking the easy option to me!
Hoover
(exploding): Coming from you! The hypocrisy! Who was it who “drank” when nobody else could?
Play 6 Presidents 32 – 37 (War: World War II and Vietnam)
Speakers: Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy,
Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon
Truman: I sleep because I brought an end to a war that could have gone on and on. The Japanese were never going to surrender lightly.
Nixon: So you dropped 2 nuclear bombs – first on Hiroshima and then Nagasaki.
Eisenhower: I can imagine what a hard decision that must have been. War is a terrible thing.
Kennedy: And you should know! What a hero you were during the war!
Johnson: Yes. Leading our forces into Europe and then commanding the largest ever seaborne invasion!
Nixon: Those D-Day Landings certainly were something else!
Truman: And then we had to deal with yet another kind of war, afterwards.
Eisenhower: The Cold War! We both did our best to defend our country from that lurking threat of Communism.
Play 7 Presidents 38 – 45
Speakers: Gerald Ford, James Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, William Clinton and George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump
G.W. Bush: I’m surprised you had any time to play baseball, Pa!
Bush: Or you, son! Though I guess winning a baseball game is a lot easier than those old war games we’ve both had to compete in.
Reagan: Yup! The world stage sure is a scary place to be, if that’s where you’re going to place yourself.
Ford: For all my faults, at least I recognised my own limitations.
Carter: And being totally new to politics, nobody ever expected much from me.
Reagan: Maybe I should have just starred in Star Wars … instead of trying to create them!
Bush: And successful as I was in foreign affairs, maybe I should have done more for the less well off at home.
Clinton: Well, I didn’t do so badly at home – America enjoyed its longest economic boom in its entire history!
G.W. Bush: But as to your immediate home affairs! I don’t suppose your wife was too impressed with them!
Clinton: And I think my wife – as the first First Lady to run for elected office – might just have plenty to say in the future about your handling of our country and world affairs! Only time will tell. Maybe one day, in the not too distant future, we may all be drinking a toast to the first Female President! Now that really would be some first!
Available in hard copy for $29.73 or as a download for $20.94 from this site. Click the check box for download only or hit the add to cart button for postal option.
