Had some of my most successful and engaging classes today. The work was hard but they loved it!
You will need:
1. A3 paper to create story boards. At the top goes the title 'Story making race' and beneath that the beginning of the story, for example:
Story begins: You borrow a dusty old book from your best friend
or
Story begins: Bill Gates is flying his spaceship. He is approaching Mars when he sees something moving on the surface (*surface: 표면)
The rest of the page is 5 boxes labelled one to five. (See attached)
2. About 30 words cut out in 48 sized font. (see attached) Fold them all and put them in a container/envelope
3. You will also need a set of coloured pens, preferably felt tips, your co-teacher should be able to find some (see note 1)
The lesson went like this:
We pushed the desks around to make 6 large tables. Then took the 6 most talented kids (your co-teacher can help or pick the smartest couple and they can help chose the rest) and sent the rest of the class to the back of the room. Sit one genius to each table and let them chose one peer to join them. This spreads out the I.Q to make sure each group will be able to participate and stops a genius being completely surrounded by idiots. You now have 12 people sat. Ask the rest to sit where ever they want (max 6 to a group is preferable). As they are sitting down bring up the online stop watch (see note 2), click countdown and enter 5 minutes. This will be the time they have for each evolution.
Then give out one pen to each group, letting the kids chose the colour (see note 3).
Now its time to ask your co-teacher to explain the lesson: One box to one group. 5 minute evolutions. At the start of each evolution the kids blindly pick a word from the envelope (see note 4) and need to continue the story using that word. At the end of 5 minutes the A3 story sheets will rotate clockwise, then they need to write the next part to that story and so on.
Remember to collect in the used words, put them back in the envelope and have them chose a new word each turn. By then end you should have 6 completed stories each with the provided introduction and 5 parts
Present the completed stories to the class. It turned out best to have the co-teacher read and translate the stories to them so that they understood (See note 5). The presentation is often fun and shows how the story ran its course. Although we only had time to read two or three stories before the bell the kids would often stay a few more minutes and hear the rest! Yay!
After a couple of lessons we discovered..
1. When the stories rotate, have a member of the previous group explain what has happened in the story so far. This saves time.
2. Its best not to give out a word on the 5th and final evolution, just let them round the story off somehow.
Have fun with this lesson an tell me how it worked out, and please edit or improve it if you can
Note 1: Using colour felt tips helps the stories look nice but also it helps each group identify how they contributed to the story at the end by their individual colour
Note 2: The online stopwatch (
http://www.online-stopwatch.com/large-stopwatch/) is a fantastic teaching tool. Not only does it clearly show kids how long that have to do a set task its also my best disciplining tool. Tell your rowdiest classes than this stopwatch represents how long the lesson will continue into their brake time, then start the stopwatch. It's entertaining to see the loudest kids as they mentally battle between wanting to continue talking and not wanting to stay after class. Only stop the stopwatch when they are all sat down and there is complete silence. Any mumblings just let it run, and when you stop it wait a few seconds, if they begin talking just start it again. They get the picture pretty quickly. I've never reached 2 minutes.
When the class ends its imperative that you stick to your guns. Even if the class has only run up 14 seconds, click 'back', click countdown, enter 14 seconds, set and start the countdown. The great thing about this system is that you don't have to shout, the kids will shout at their peers to be quite. Just start the stopwatch, sit back and wait.
Note 3: You will be surprised how this effects performance
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/sheena_iyengar_on_the_art_of_choosing.htmlNote 4: The extra words were to help give the kids some direction. Just left to their own devices they may have struggled with ideas of how to continue the story. Unfortunately it can also hinder if they pick a completely unrelated word. But this can lead to some of the more interesting ... plot twists?
Note 5: We are lucky in that we have a desk camera rigged into the computer. We place the finished stories on my desk and they are shown on the big screen. This way my co-teacher can translate them, the kids can follow the written English and I can edit any grammar or spelling mistakes as we find them.
