Last week I worked with three of my groups on storytelling. Wonderful and imaginative topic but I guess not that much when you have to come up with a story, write it and present it in 90 minutes in classroom. It is not always easy and so we often tend to give it as homework.

I decided to do it all in classroom and make it as fun as possible.

• We started with titles. After a short discussion we decided that a good title includes key words and evokes curiosity with a bit of mystery behind it. I handed out blank papers and asked them to write down the title; not thinking too much about the story behind it. Just title!
• Next step was swapping the papers randomly. Each student gets a paper with a title on it (as they already know, title has key words but the story is hidden). At that moment, student might get excited about the strange title and come to realization that soon they will write stories. Well, not really at that stage (surprising moment ).
• Ask your students to draw lines so that their paper is divided into 6 squares.

We talked about the parts of the story:

1^st square – what/who      2^nd square -where/when      3^rd and 4^th square – what happened (plot)     5^th square – climax          6^th square – feelings/impact of the story on the main character (“It was exciting/disappointing/thrilling/disgusting…”).

• They don’t write but draw simple sketches into each box.
• They swap papers again (you can give it back to person who wrote the title or random again) and think of the story behind the pictures. It is their turn now to write down the story using the pictures.
• Last stage is pair work (person who wrote the title and the story with the one who drew it). They sit together and compare the stories. Usually their stories differ at least a bit.

I found out that on one hand it saves a lot of time in the class when they works in such stages (when you just ask them to think about the story and write it down, it takes ages) and on the other hand they feel more secure and comfortable to share and present their stories because after all it is always the work of more than just one person!

I tried this way of telling the stories with kids as well as adults and levels from pre-intermediate to upper intermediate. They all really enjoyed it and were happy not only to share but also listen to other stories because their sketches and titles were interesting and evoked curiosity – they all did a great job!