Aims:

• Exercising and strengthening the narrative abilities of the students (especially the SLLs)
• Enabling pupils to express their imagination and their creativity
• Encouraging students to think out of the box and make up a story including random words

Links to curriculum: 

Literacy in the languages of instruction

Procedure:

The teacher can divide the pupils into small heterogeneous groups with around 4-5 members each. The teacher has to create and number a number of Wikis that corresponds to the number of groups; for instance, if there are 3 groups, Wiki 1, Wiki 2 and Wiki 3 need to be created. At this point, each group is given one of the Wikis and a word from the resource called “Multilingual Dictionary” that is chosen by the teacher. If the Dictionary is empty because no words have been added to it, the teacher can simply choose a word for each group. The words could be, for instance, linked to topics that have recently been explained and discussed in class. Once that every group has been given a Wiki and a word, each group has to start writing a story that includes the word, by directly typing the story in the Wiki. All the group members have to contribute to the story, but only one member actually types it in. The children are given 10 minutes to write the first part of the story.

When the 10 minutes are over, the pupils have to stop writing. Each group has to close their Wiki and move on to the subsequent one in numerical order; for instance, referring to the previously menioned example, group 1 would have to close Wiki 1 and open Wiki 2, group 2 would have to move on to Wiki 3 and group 3 to Wiki 1. Then every group is given another word by the teacher and has to continue the story started by one of the other groups. The new word needs to be included in this part of the story. Just as for the first part, students have 10 minutes to write the second part; this time the story should be typed in by one of the group members who did not do this in Step A. The activity proceeds as in Step B until the teacher decides it is appropriate to stop. Group members should take turns to type the story in the Wiki.

This activity can also be carried out without the use of computers/tablets by asking children to write down their stories on sheets of paper: in this case, children will simply have to swap sheets of paper instead of swapping Wikis.

If the activity is carried out with older children (10+ years of age), the activity can be made a bit more complex by asking the pupils to follow a simple narrative structure, such as the following:

1. Introduction: initial situation and characters
2. Change: a problem/opportunity causes the initial situation to change
3. Task/Journey: the main character(s) has/have a task to complete and/or they have a journey to embark on
4. Obstacle: the antagonist(s) intervene(s)
5. Resolution: the main character(s) either win(s) and complete the task or is/are defeated
6. End: the story’s conclusion

In this case, students will still have to include the word that has been assigned to them by the teacher, but they will also have to follow the steps of the narrative structure. In other words, every time they swap Wikis, they will have to move on to the following narrative step.

Once the writing activity has been concluded, the teacher can ask the pupils to open the Wiki that they used in Step A and proofread the story in order to correct any mistakes that may have been made. Every group member is given a specific area of expertise, like grammar, vocabulary, spelling, plot consistency... The group members start proofreading the story and correcting mistakes, with each one of them focussing on their specific area of expertise. When the proofreading of the story is over, all the pupils with the same area of expertise gather among themselves in order to discuss any doubts they may have encountered while proofreading. Once these doubts have been discussed and solved, students return to their initial writing groups in order to explain what has been discussed in each group of experts.

Further development:

In a forum, each student could be asked to choose one of the stories and record himself/herself on the VLE while reading it out loud. Every pupil can listen to his/her recording and record it again until he/she is happy with it. All the recordings could then be played in front of the whole class.

Materials and digital tools:

Students will have to type their story in Wikis and audio-record themselves in a Forum .