http://www.digitalplay.info/blog/2012/01/20/an-interactive-story/
Level: Intermediate+
Location: Connected Classroom
Language Focus: 3rd Conditional
Skills Focus: Reading, Speaking
Game: An Interactive Story
Can you help the girl get home through the woods before it gets dark?
This is a nice little game presented as a moving story book. That is, it looks like a book upon which the drawings of the characters move. ok, they move in a limited way but it’s got text for reading practice and it looks kind of cute. At the beginning of the game you get a bit of the background story and some information on what you have to do. A few pages into the story the game starts in earnest as the girl meets a strange creature and has to decide how to react. This is where you the reader get to choose what the character does and in effect dictate the course of the story. I did this on an interactive whiteboard allowing time on each page for my learners to read the story, discuss any difficult language elements, answer some questions (sort of spontaneous comprehension questions) and finally talk about and reach a consensus on what course of action to take in the story.
Preparation
I played the game first and prepared a set of questions to ask my learners. Having played the game I realised that by asking certain questions I could ‘guide’ my class to make the choices that would bring out the more interesting elements of the story (it was also the longest version). Here are those questions:
- What time of year does the story take place?
- Where was she going?
- What was the matter with the strange creature?
- What do you think would have happened if you hadn’t stopped to help?
- Why do you think it’s a bad idea to stop and play in the park?
- What would have happened if you had stopped?
- What does the old man drop?
- What reward does he give her for returning his wallet?
- What would have happened if she’s kept it?
- What does the girl get if she arrives late?
- What does the girl get when she arrives just in time?
- What does the girl do after dinner?
Pre-play
- I made a copy of the questions above so that there would be a copy for each pair of my learners.
- Before I gave them a copy I showed them the screenshot above from the game and got them to predict the story.
- After a bit I told them they were all good guesses but these questions may help them guess better.
- I handed them the questions, gave them a little time to read and talk about them before getting feedback.
Play
- I started the game telling my learners to raise their hand if we reached a point in the story where they could make a guess at the answer to one of the questions.
- Difficult language was dealt with reactively and I threw in a few extra questions as they occurred to me even asking questions such as how old did they think she was, what kind of person she was and what her parents were like.
- As the choices came up I set my learners in pairs to briefly discuss the choices, answer a question, feedback to the class and then vote on a course of action and explain why.
- We repeated the above steps until the story reached its conclusion.
Post Play
- a recapped version of the story
- what they thought of the story
- what they would personally done at each moment
Extra