Literacy Night Activities
Story corner/Story teller
Create an area where kids can read books with family members or listen to a story. Volunteers could
assist in the area, read stories to students in large or small groups.
Materials: Books, comfortable sitting materials (blankets, bean bags, chairs), quieter area.
Tips: Contact local storytellers to tell stories to the students. High school speech teams are a good place
to find storytellers as well. Consider finding storytellers with the same ethnic background as students.
Volunteers needed: 1-2 people.
Bookmarks
Students make bookmarks to take home.
Materials: Construction paper or cardstock, magazines, glue sticks, markers or crayons, stickers, ribbons,
other art supplies.
Tips: Pre-cut bookmarks and magazine pictures to make it easy for students, especially younger
students. Have extra bookmarks available so students can make more than one if they wish.
Volunteers needed: 1-2 people for each bookmark area/table.
Journals
Create journals with students to help them practice their writing skills at home.
Materials: Color construction paper/heavy cardstock, paper, stapler, string, hole punch, markers.
Tips: Encourage students of all ages to make journals, even PreK students who are still developing their
writing skills. Consider incorporating the journals with other activities at the event.
Volunteers needed: 1-2 people.
Book walk
Similar to a cake walk, students walk in a circle to music. When the music stops, they stand on a letter.
The volunteer draws a letter from a hat and the student standing on that letter is able to pick out a book
to take home. This is a fun way to give away books to students.
Materials: Books for students to take home, appropriate music and player, letters to tape on the
ground, tape.
Tips: Instead of letters, print out pictures of characters or books from children’s stories that correspond
to letters (i.e. Madeline for M, The Grinch for G, etc). To make it harder for older students, ask them to
give the letter sound, another word that starts with that letter or a rhyme before letting them pick out
their book.
Volunteers needed: 2 people; one to run the music/draw letters and one to help students pick out
books.
Wall to Wall Scrabble
Students and families are given letters to make words to add on a giant Scrabble-like game board. The
goal is to add lots of words and make the game board as big as possible.
Hang a large piece of butcher paper on the wall to serve as a game board. The game starts with one
word to build off of, such as “reading” or the name of the school. Players are given 6-8 letters (written
on square note cards) to form a word; encourage them to use as many letters they can when thinking of
a word. Players are allowed to exchange one letter. The player tapes the word up onto the game board,
intersecting a current word.
Materials: Letters written on square cardstock/heavy paper, butcher paper or other large area to use as
a game board, tape, markers.
When making the letter cards, make several alphabet sets and many commonly used letters such as
vowels, S, T, R, N, H, D, etc.
Tips: Younger students may need assistance from families or volunteers to form words. If they are
learning how to spell their name, encourage them to spell their name.
Give letter cards different colored borders or have multiple game boards and have classrooms or grades
compete against one another to see who can make the most words, longest words, use the rarest
letters, etc.
Volunteers needed: 2-3 people.
Retell/Act out your favorite story
Students act out a story as it is being read aloud or with guidance from memory. Volunteers can help
students with their sequencing skills by asking what comes first in the story, what comes second, etc.
Materials: Books, costumes, story-related props.
Tips: Volunteers can read a story first and then have students act it out or have students act out their
favorite story from memory. If students act out a story from memory, volunteers can prompt students
to remember what happens next in the story, especially if the students are younger. If the students
make up a new end to the story, have fun with it!
This activity is easy to tie into a specific theme like Dr. Seuss or fairy tales.
Volunteers needed: 1-2 people.
Perpetual Story
Students and families add one sentence at a time onto a running story. At the end of the family night or
the next school day, read the story to students and families.
Materials: Butcher paper or classroom size notepad, markers.
Tips: It is easy to tie this into a specific theme, such as write your own fairytale or ghost story.
Volunteers needed: 1 person.
Library Cards
Have a station where students and families can sign up for library cards. Check to see if your local library
has online or paper library card sign-ups.
Materials: Library card registrations (online or on paper).
Tips: If your city has a bookmobile, see if you can arrange for them to visit during the family night.
Families are then able to check out books right away.
Volunteers needed: 1-2 people.
Literacy Handouts
Provide literacy handouts for families focusing on best practices for reading stories with children, tips on
integrating literacy into every day activities such as grocery shopping and family literacy activities and
games.
Materials: Reading Corps literacy handouts developed by Family Literacy Members, other literacy
materials suitable for family audiences.
Tips: If possible, have materials in a variety of languages spoken by your school’s families.
Have a literacy presentation at the same time to attract families. It also might work to have literacy
tips/presentation for families in one area with a storytime or literacy activity for children in a different
area.
Volunteers needed: 1 person, preferably a Reading Corps tutor, Internal Coach or other reading
specialist.
Book Swap
Students pick out a book to bring home; when they’ve finished reading it, they bring it back and swap it
for another book in the lending library.
Materials: Small library of books available to lend to students, explanation of book swap to send home
to parents, checkout form.
Tips: Use donated books to start a Reading Corps library, and then if a book goes missing, it’s not a
school library book. You could start this at the beginning of the year and have students swap throughout
the school year, such as every Friday. Tutors can also do this with Reading Corps students.
Volunteers needed: 1 person.
Literacy Quiz Game
Have a literacy game show with students competing against parents, teachers, or principals or against
other groups of students. Put participants in groups of 4-6 (as a family or just students). Write three sets
of 4-5 literacy-based questions in a range of difficulty, including a visual round of images of literary
characters. Read the questions one by one and have participants answer them on a piece of paper,
including the image round. After all the questions are done, check the answers to see who won. Have a
tiebreaker question prepared if necessary.
Materials: Answer sheets, 12-15 questions, music for between questions, prize or award for winners.
Tips: This quiz game structure is similar to pub trivia, but you could take any game show and use literary
questions – Jeopardy, Family Feud, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, etc.
Volunteers needed: 3-4 people.
Literacy Scavenger Hunt
Students and their families go around the school to answer questions or find literacy related items.
Write a list of things that students need to find based on common books and stories your students
know. Send them out with the families to find the answers or objects to complete the hunt. After
completing the scavenger hunt, students receive a prize/award/job well done.
Materials: Scavenger hunt questions, objects to find and retrieve, prizes if necessary.
Tips: Each teacher could have something in their classroom – either they have an answer to a question
or something to give that is needed to complete the scavenger hunt (i.e. a picture of The Cat’s hat from
The Cat in the Hat).
If families at your school have appropriate technology, they could take pictures of something to show as
proof, such as taking a picture on their cell phone. Have materials available for families without picturetaking capabilities. Otherwise you could print out pictures to distribute to the students throughout the
night.
Volunteers needed: Determined by the amount of objects needed to find, support from the school staff,
etc.
Literacy Bingo
Students and families play bingo with literacy-based game boards. Boards could use letters, shapes,
words, book titles, etc.
Materials: Game boards, chips, prizes if necessary.
Tips: Use different game boards to adjust the difficulty level – use shapes and letters for PreK students,
words or book titles for older students.
Another variation to increase the difficulty is to use letters on the game board but give out letter sounds
instead of letter names.
Volunteers needed: 3-4 people depending on the number of people participating, if it is the main
activity or one of many activities of the night.
Guest Readers
Invite people as guest readers to read in classrooms or at a literacy night. Guest readers could be family
members, high profile guests such as politicians, firefighters, news reporters, athletes, musicians, DJs,
etc. At least one month prior, start inviting guests from the community. To invite family members, send
letters home 2-3 weeks in advance with a school calendar and form to return if they are interested.
Distribute a form to teachers to provide days and times that they could have guest readers in their class.
As the date approaches, email confirmations with details to both teachers and guest readers.
Tips: Use several modes of communication including written letters on Reading Corps or school
stationary, phone calls, email and forms on their website.
If you have many guest readers over a period of time, make a large master calendar to display in the
school. This will help inform and excite students, teachers and families about the guest readers. If there
is a high profile guest, include a brief bio next to the calendar.
Check with your guest readers to see if they will be bringing a book along or would like one provided. It
also may be appropriate to give guest readers information on effective read-aloud techniques such as
dialogic reading.
Ask guest readers to explain how they use reading in their daily lives and jobs, how much they had to
practice reading, how much they enjoy reading, etc.
Volunteers needed: Varied.
People who have been guest readers with Minnesota Reading Corps:
Representative Betty McCollum
Justice Alan Page, MN Supreme Court
Chief Thomas Smith, St. Paul Police
John Coy, author
Jane Eastwood, St. Paul Education Director
Vulcans, St. Paul Winter Carnival
Doomtree
Jim Schubel, WCCO
Kathryn Knuttila, 2010 Miss MN
Saint Paul firefighters
Jana Shortal, Kare 11
Boua Xiong, Kare 11
Mark Wheat, 89.3 The Current DJ
Lindsey Seavert, WCCO
Theme Related: Camp Read Along
Create camp related stations: a station where students can write a postcard to a friend from camp or to
their teacher and stick it in a mailbox to be delivered the next day, bear tracks that lead to a literacyrelated game at a fishing hole, moose tracks that lead to a storyteller from the American Indian
Women’s Resource Center, bird tracks that lead to the gym (where families can read with flashlights
inside tents).
Materials: postcards/note cards, mailbox, tents, flashlights, books.
Volunteers needed: 1-2 volunteers for each area.
Theme related: Fairytale Challenge
Students do a series of fairytale-themed challenges that are mostly physical in nature.
Students can climb Rapunzel's hair (using a climbing rope), climb across a climbing wall to find beans,
gold coins and a golden hen (like Jack & the Beanstalk), use straws to blow balls across a table to knock
over objects (like the 3 Little Pigs), etc. After completing each challenge, they receive a page in a book. If
they successfully complete all challenges, they can assemble the book using a stapler (with the help of
an adult). They can write their own fairytale in this book (or fill-in-the blanks).
Materials: Climbing rope, ping pong balls, pictures of 3 Little Pigs’ houses, colored paper to use as book
covers, paper to distribute as book pages, signs for each area.
Tips: Design the challenges to fit your space – consider if these could be done outside at a carnival.
Volunteers needed: 1-2 volunteers for each area.
Theme related: Dr. Seuss
1. Cat Hat Toss: Students line up, pick a hat, and try to toss it into the upside-down Cat Hat
(garbage can with red and white stripes). The child in the group with the most successful tosses
receives a prize sticker, if desired.
2. One Fish, Two Fish Pool: Have kids line up and fish one at a time for red fish, blue fish. Time
them for 60 seconds. See who can catch the most fish in 60 seconds. Winner receives a sticker,
if desired. Up to 5 kids can fish together.
3. Balancing: Kids see how many cups, saucers and spoons they can balance. Works well in
partners: have one child place items on their partner’s head.
Materials: Hats, red/white striped barrel or garbage can, fishing poles with magnets, magnetic/paper
clipped fish, plastic cups and saucers, spoons, stickers.
Tips: Have The Cat in the Hat, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish and 10 Apples Up On Top books
available for students to read and to connect to the activities.
Volunteers needed: 1-2 volunteers for each area.