Unlike Ian Doescher's book-length plays, this is super short — only 84 pages. It would make for a great pre-holiday break read, when your students are already dreaming of being out of school. It's appropriate for 6-9th grades, I'd say, as most will be familiar with the story — A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens.
Usually I suggest one scene, per day, and no more, to start as your students may struggle to get through those until they get the hang of reading the work. But these scenes are so short, with so few readers, I'm going to recommend reading an Act a day, making this a five-day in-class read, no more. Maybe even less, depending on how proficient your readers are and how quickly they pick up the iambic pentameter.
Keep track of who is reading by noting, each day, who has read which character. For this, I've made available my Reading Roles Sheets.
Try not to allow students to always read the same character, especially Scrooge. He gets a lot of speaking time, so spread that role around. You might even assign it to different readers, in different scenes. Also, some characters speak in prose, not verse. Or in verse, such as villanelles and rhyming quatrains, but not iambic pentameter. If students switch up roles, they'll learn to identify the different forms of poetry. They'll also learn a little bit about each character. You want everyone reading because they will all need practice doing this and you want to keep them engaged. Non-readers will zone out.
Because the play is so short, there are few opportunities for speaking parts in this play. Act 1 has only 8 speaking roles; Act 2, 10; Act 3 has the most, at 16; Act 4 has 14; and Act 5 only 10.
Each act is broken into scenes, as well: Act 1 has 2; Act 2 has 3 scenes; Act 3 has the most, 4 scenes; Act 4 has only 1; and Act 5 has 3.
I also strongly suggest watching the movie in segments that correspond to the acts, before or after reading each act. Some students will not have sufficient background knowledge to understand the story and thus what they're reading. Breaking up the watching / reading helps to keep their interest, as well.
In addition, Doescher uses a Chorus for this play. I encourage you to use the Chorus as a full-class choral read. It occurs several times in this play.
If you want to use this as an opportunity to introduce iambic pentameter, check out my lesson plans for using any of his William Shakespeare's Star Wars books.
