The Turtle and The Hare - Spanish Reader's Theater

This is a small group reader's theater is for 4 students. In Spanish, the name of this reader's theater is 'La Tortuga y la Liebre.' I wrote it for Easter but it could be performed at any time. It is based on a tale by Aesop. Aesop's tales are a great way to teach students how to look for lessons or morals!

In the script,Hare loves to brag about how fast and cool he is so the other animals do not like being around him. The animals DO like tortoise though because he always has something nice to say. Hare sees the animals being nice to Tortoise and is mean to him because it is jealous. One day Tortoise has had enough and challenges Hare to a race. If Hare loses, it has to give up bragging. When the race begins, Hare is quickly far ahead but then it slows down to listen to other animals laughing at Tortoise. It decides to wait for Tortoise so it can make more fun of it and then it takes a nap while it waits. Tortoise is slow but steady and passes the sleeping Hare. When Hare wakes up, Tortoise is two steps from the finish line and there is no time to catch it. Tortoise wins. Hare keeps its promise to stop bragging and finds the other animals are friendlier now. / A una liebre le encantaba presumir de lo rápido y genial que era, pero a los otros animales no les gustaba estar cerca de ella. En cambio, les gustaba hablar con la tortuga porque siempre tenía algo agradable que decir. La liebre veía celosa como los animales eran tan amables con la tortuga, por ese motivo, la liebre era mala con la tortuga, pues sentía celos. Un día la tortuga había tenido suficiente y decidió desafiar a la liebre a una carrera. El trato era que, si la liebre perdía, tendría que renunciar a ser tan presumida. Cuando la carrera comenzó, la liebre avanzó rápidamente y pronto estuvo muy por delante, pero luego bajó su velocidad para escuchar como los otros animales se reían de la tortuga. Así que, decidió esperar a la tortuga para burlarse de ella, entonces tomó una siesta mientras espera. La tortuga era lenta pero constante y entonces rebasa a la liebre que está dormida. Cuando la liebre se despierta, Tortuga está a dos pasos de la línea de meta y no hay tiempo para alcanzarla. Y la tortuga gana. La liebre mantiene su promesa de dejar de fanfarronear y descubre que al dejar esa actitud los otros animales son ahora más amigables.

There are two morals for this fable. The first is 'One should never think too highly of themselves' and the second is 'slow and steady wins the race.' Students are asked to write and choose the best moral at the end and then use evidence to prove it. We use reader's theaters to encourage our students to practice fluency. It is a fun way to do something that they need. As you know, Spanish must be spoken and read in order to be mastered! Most of our scripts are in black and white so they photo copy easily. The problem with many other reader's theaters is that students spend a lot of time waiting for their part. When you have a small group they get more practice and you get less off task behaviors. Our names are Julio Lopez and Melanie Whitesides but our store name is LosDosMaestros and we hope that your students enjoy this script as much as ours did. If students are struggling to perform this, have them underline potential trouble words as they read it. If you like this script look for other Aesop tales at our store. Please let us know how things go!

If you would like this tale in English, please go to Wonbyone's store.

La Tortuga y la Liebre - Spanish Reader's Theater by Aesop by Melanie Whitesides is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.