Family Literacy Day - November 1, 2013

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A lesson on ReadWriteThink titled Celebrate Family Literacy Day suggests events that engage families in learning activities with their school-age children. For informational text to read with your children, puzzles and games and simple recipes, visit the Mini Page archive. The archive offers past editions of the Mini Page, organized by theme, topic, people and organizations, and places. Your newspaper may run current editions. In the home, be creative with the newspaper!

  1. Create a comic strip about your family.
  2. Invent a story using two or more photos chosen from the newspaper.
  3. Use a recipe from the newspaper to make a dish; modify it and see what happens!
  4. Talk about the day’s events while doing the dishes.
  5. Sing the musical scale using words or items for sale in newspapers.
  6. Work with a family member on word or number games published in your newspaper.
  7. Share the news of the day with your pet or toy.
  8. Think of action words to describe a photo or to replace verbs in headlines.
  9. Find words that rhyme with words you know. Write and share poems that use the rhyming words
  10. Play the “what if” game with the news. For example: What happens if the musician sings at noon on the street corner instead of at night in a concert?
  11. Use your own experiences and what you find in your newspaper to tell about a holiday or special occasion.
  12. Find 10 words, objects or other in the newspaper that start with the first letter in your first and/or last name (or other letters).
(Adapted from http://abclifeliteracy.ca/fld/15-minutes-of-fun) To promote family literacy, publish one or more of the features and stories below. Some stories were made available in other years. Also, you may feature people in your community who support literacy initiatives that involve families. Samples, Promo 1 and Promo 2, show how one newspaper featured its name and contact information and a local family in its in-paper features that promote having parents and children read news stories together. Create similar promos. Adapt for your use by substituting your newspaper's name, contact information and photos of local families. (Some circulation departments distribute similar promotions when offering subscriptions.) Tell stories about literacy. Ask one or more community members, young and old, to explain how literacy transformed their lives–helped, healed, comforted or changed them in ways they remember. Also, ask them to recall experiences when they shared a story or book with someone. Readers may also share favorite poems, books, writers or authors.

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