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?”
