One Night a Week… One Family… One Read Aloud… Priceless!
- Today’s reading investigation: Family Christmas Story
- Family Sharing: “If reading is writing… what do we need to gather for today’s story making?” *Invite everyone to share. Discuss what is needed.
- Materials: family learning journals/paper, pencils, colored pencils, and/or crayons, and one dice.
- Remind them to open their journals to the next available page and date it. Don’t forget to have them label the top of the page with today’s learning topic/skill.
- Guided enquiry: *Once all of the materials are gathered, invite one of the learners to be the scribe for today’s story making. During the drafting of the story, invite a learner to write descriptive words and phrases that should be remembered.
- Story drafting: *Roll the dice (every family member gets a roll). Use the chart above to choose the next part of the story.
- Next: *Once all 4 rolls have been completed, your family has the first rough draft. Invite the family scribe to share the first draft. If you had a someone writing word choices/adjective phrases, invite them to share those as additions to the first draft.
- Finally: Encourage everyone to begin drafting their own version of the family story. Younger members can draw a beginning-middle-end pictorial of the family story.
- Skill Discussion: “Let’s share what you’ve penned!” Encourage everyone to share… including your youngest.
- Discussion Wrap-Up: “Would someone like to draft a new “secret” version of our family “Christmas Story” for our Christmas Eve story time?”
