Suggested Grade/Age Range: Grades 1-3 (ages 6-9)

Activity Objective: The goal of the activity is to have children consider main parts of the story ‘Fifteen Dollars and Thirty-five Cents: A Story About Choices’ where a choice is made and how a better choice could have been made instead. Children will be asked to act out these scenarios.

Learning Goals
Big Messages to Kids

Link to Ontario Curriculum

Materials Required:

• Book ‘Fifteen Dollars and Thirty-five Cents: A Story About Choices’ (by: Kathryn Cole)
• Chart paper and markers to write responses

Prep Time: 10 minutes

• Bookmark scenes in book that will be used for role plays and discussion
• Gather writing materials to record children’s comments

Task Time: 30-40 minutes

• Introduce activity
• Have children act out role plays of scenes
• Have children discuss different choices that could have been made in each scene and record these down

Activity Description:

1.       Gather whole class and tell them they will be acting out a few scenes from the book ‘Fifteen Dollars and Thirty-five Cents: A Story About Choices’ (the book should have already been read to them beforehand so that the class is familiar with the story)

2.       Read the scene and ask the children what is a better choice the character could have made instead? Write down the children’s suggestions on chart paper and then have a few children act out this scene with the suggested better choice. Allow the children to come up with the dialogue that they want to use:

To facilitate the role play process, the dialogue that the children are choosing to say can be written on chart paper or the board for them to refer to

3.       Repeat step 2 for the other scenarios

Wrap-up Discussion:

4.       Complete the activity with a discussion about making choices and emphasize that we can always make a better choice following a poor choice (see Overview  for Big Messages)

Activity Extensions:

If developmentally appropriate, children can choose to write in a journal or their writer’s notebook a reflection about this activity with topics such as “Why is it important to think through a choice before making it?” “What could I do even if I made a bad choice at first?”,  “From this activity, what important things did I learn about making choices?”

Additional Comments:

Allow children to offer a diversity of choices in response to the scenes in the book. Be mindful to not label some as being ‘good’ and others as being ‘bad/not good’. Rather, encourage children to think through the consequences for each choice carefully and guide them towards making healthier choices

Additional Resources:

You may choose to review over the Making Choices Literature Review before implementing this activity. It can be found here.