MODULE 4 COLLABORATIVE STORYTELLING

Here is my first experience with collaborative storytelling! I was inspired by the well-known "Choose Your Own Story" method (those old books!) and so I created a video to guide my 2nd grade students along the path. They were asked to  make choices about the character of the story (an animal), its features and what happens to it.

OBJECTIVES OF THE ACTIVITY:

1.The students must create a story in a collaborative way by choosing amongst some items shown to them on a video:
 -What kind of animal is the main character
-Its features
-What happens to it (a "problem")
-Who helps
-How the story ends

2. Each students will produce a drawn, written and/or oral work based on the common story.

PROCEDURE:

1. Tell the class they are going to create a story and that they must watch a video as a previous task.
2. Play it once with no pauses
3. Ask them what they think they can use the video for. Help him by clarifying: they can make choices about the characteristics of the story. Insist on the fact that they should get to a common point.
4. Play the video with a pause after every choice to make. After every pause, the students work in groups to choose what choice to make. They write their choice on a piece of paper.
5. Each piece of paper functions as a vote, and we proceed accordingly to set the final choices.
6. Then each student produces his/her own story. They can write, draw and/or tell it aloud.

THE RESULTS:
In our case, the common choice was: "A black dog has a problem: he is ill. He/She needs some help, and then a kind giraffe comes". We decided to give the story the title "The Sad Dog and the Gifaffe"
The children then produced their own "end of the story·.

The video:

 Watching the video:

Photographs of the children making their productions:

Showing / Telling our stories:

It would have been wonderful if the children had been able to produce their own stories in a digital format, but this was not possible since 2nd grade has not access to personal computers. But  I'm planning to create a digital story based on the ones they made on paper!

This is the rubric I will use to assess the activity: