French Reader’s Theatre Scripts | Decodable Plays for AI/EI | Fluency & Phonics Activities
Looking for an engaging way to help your French primary students practise the complex sounds AI/EI while building decoding skills, reading fluency, confidence, and expression?
This 70+-page French Reader’s Theatre resource includes three short, decodable plays designed specifically for early readers. Each play gives students meaningful opportunities to practise reading words containing the AI/EI sounds in connected text — while having fun performing with their classmates!
The scripts use simple, repetitive, decodable text to help beginning readers experience success while developing their fluency.
What’s Included
3 Original Decodable Plays:
- Un bon repas
- La reine et la baleine
- La mitaine de la reine
Students get repeated practice with the target sounds through words such as lait, mais, fraises, raisins, reine, baleine, treize, seize, paire, mitaine, chaise, neige and laine.
3 Script Formats for Each Play:
1️⃣ Single-role highlighted script (colour) — Only one student’s part is highlighted so they can focus specifically on their own lines.
2️⃣ All-in-one multi-colour script — Each character’s part is highlighted in a different colour, making it easy for students to follow along during small-group or partner performances.
3️⃣ Black & white script — A printer-friendly option that students can highlight or colour-code themselves.
Character Crowns, Puppets & Props:
Each play also includes character crowns that students can wear during their performance.
Students can cut out the included puppets and props, attach them to popsicle sticks, and use them with the setting pages to act out and retell the stories. This makes it easy to extend the activity into a hands-on literacy centre or oral retelling station.
Printable Follow-Up Activities:
Decode, Cut & Paste Worksheets — Students decode vocabulary from the plays and match each word with the correct picture.
Orthographic Mapping Sheets — Students say the word, identify its sounds, and map those sounds into boxes to connect decoding and encoding.
Story Sequencing Pages — Students put important events from each play in order, supporting comprehension, sequencing, and oral retelling.
Skills Practiced:
- French phonics
- Decoding words containing AI/EI
- Previously taught sounds
- Reading fluency
- Expression and prosody
- High-frequency word recognition
- Orthographic mapping
- Encoding
- Reading comprehension
- Story sequencing
- Oral retelling
- Cooperative reading
Perfect For:
- French literacy centres
- Small-group reading
- Guided phonics practice
- Partner reading
- Reading intervention
- Fluency practice
- Whole-class Reader’s Theatre
- Oral language practice
- Repeated reading
- Fun classroom performances
Reader’s Theatre gives students an authentic reason to reread the same text multiple times, allowing them to build automaticity and confidence without repeated reading feeling like a drill.
The different script formats also make the resource flexible: students who need more support can concentrate on only their highlighted lines, while students who are ready for more independence can follow the entire colour-coded or black-and-white script.
These plays are designed to be easy to prep, flexible to use, low-pressure, and FUN — making them a great way to bring phonics practice to life while helping your students become more confident French readers.
🎭 Add these AI/EI French decodable Reader’s Theatre plays to your phonics instruction and give your students a fun reason to read, reread, perform, and practice!
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This download entitles the purchaser to use it in ONE classroom only. Thank you so much for respecting my time and effort!
