Saturday 26 March 2016

Mini-foldover stories!

This version of foldover stories is much quicker, and can work with students with a smaller vocabulary - so better for younger students or those with less language experience.

I've taken the instructions from ITESLJ, as written by Vicki Konzen.


This is an old favorite.
Give each student a sheet of blank paper. Write the following words on the board in a vertical line: WHO, WHAT, HOW, WHERE, WHEN, WHY.
Explain that everyone will be writing a sentence story.
Write an example on the board, explain, asking for suggestions.

  1. Tell them to write someone's name at the top of their paper, i.e., their own, a classmate's, the teacher's, a famous person that everyone knows; fold the paper over once so no one can see it, then pass the paper to the person on their right.
  2. Write on the received paper what the subject did (suggest funny or outrageous actions), fold it over and pass it on to the right.
  3. Continue to write one line, how they did it (adverbs), fold and pass; where-pass; when-pass; and last of all, why (because...) and pass it one more time.
  4. Have the students unfold their stories, and read them silently. Help anyone who cannot read what the others wrote, or doesn't understand.
  5. Ask one student at a time to read "their" story aloud, or turn the stories in for the teacher to read. Funny! 

Something I would change is the suggestion to use a classmate's name, as it can end up being (unintentionally or intentionally) mean. I'd let them make up a name, or use a celeb or similar.  You can make it more complicated by making it a paragraph rather than one sentence - this is taken from Wikipedia's explanation of the game Consequences
Each person takes a turn choosing a word or phrase for one of eleven questions, in this order.
  1. Adjective for man
  2. Man's name
  3. Adjective for woman
  4. Woman's name
  5. Where they met
  6. He wore
  7. She wore
  8. He said to her
  9. She said to him
  10. The consequence was… (a description of what happened after)
  11. What the world said
You may need to give some extra vocab to support this, and change the order of adjective-noun for some languages.

As an alternative, you could prepare a foldable worksheet or handout for the students to add their responses.

Selamat bermain!

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