#2454. Dinner At My House: A Ghost Story

Reading/Writing, level: Elementary
Posted Mon Dec 3 08:36:18 PST 2001 by Robyn Kernagis (rkernagis@hotmail.com).
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI
Materials Required: white copy paper (cut in half), black construction paper, pencils, crayons, black markers
Activity Time: 2-3 days, 30-45 minutes each day
Concepts Taught: Each student will create and illustrate a story. They will then read their story to the class.

Anticipatory Set: I would begin by talking about favorite foods. Have students not only say what their favorite food is, but also what it looks like.

Before Beginning: Have a sample book created and share it with the class. For younger students you may want to write part of the story on the page, photo copy it and have them do illustrations and the food choices writing. Older students can do all of the writing.

Procedures:
1-Create the title page "Dinner at My House". Have the students illustrate it.
2-Discuss what a dedication is and then have students create a dedication page. they may illustrate it if they choose.
3-The first page is: "Six ghosts came to dinner at my house." The illustration needs to show six ghosts coming to dinner at the students house.
4-The next page says "This ghost ate..." A ghost is drawn on the page and the inside of the ghost is colored to either look like the food ("a watermelon" for example) or has the food in it ("macaroni and cheese"). You can also use adjectives such as bib, tiny, flying, with glasses, etc before the word ghost. I had the ghosts already drawn on the page, but the students could also do this.
5-The page after the ghost says what the ghost ate (an apple) and then has an illustration of that food. This pattern needs to continue for all six ghosts.
6-The first page after all the ghosts and what they ate is "Then they all said 'Thank-You'. Next is, "Then they all flew home." Then, "And they all fell asleep." The last page is "And they all dreamed of me!"
7-These pages need to be illustrated to show what the words say. It is important to remind students how many ghosts there are.
8-Have each student put his or her pages in the correct order. Staple them together using black construction paper as the cover.

Closure/Assessment: Allow each student to share his or her book with the class. Each student should be assessed on illustrating each page correctly and writing the necessary sentence or words correctly on the page.