What’s the story? Using stories in the Secondary Classroom
Dave Spencer
Georgia July 2015
Vocabulary presentation using stories
Tell a story based around the words you want to teach. As you get to each word, try to elicit the word by explaining or defining it. Recap the story getting them to give you all the target words.
Alphabet Story
Ask students, in pairs, to write a short story which includes every letter of the alphabet. Use as a warmer.
Word by word story
You stand at the board and get students to give you one word at a time to write a collective story, which you write on the board. Students can also give you punctuation. At the end, you may want the class to try to improve the grammar and add linkers.
Madlib Story
Ask students to write down:
1 a country 2 a boy’s name – famous, fictional, unusual… 3 a girl’s name– famous, fictional, unusual… 4 a city 5 a verb in the past simple (+ object if necessary)
6 an animal 7 a superhero 8 a place 9 a type of food 10 a number
Then give them a skeleton text to put their words into. Let them compare texts. Then analyse the linkers and use those linkers as a structure for the students’ own text.
This story took place in (1) ______. It all began when (2) ______met (3) ______. They decided to go to (4) ______. Lots of things happened there. First they (5) ______. Then they saw a big (6) ______. The (6) ______attacked them but just at that moment (7) ______came and rescued them. (7) ______took them to (8) ______and they ate (9) ______. In the end, (2) ______married (3) ______and they had (10) ______children.
Picture story
Find a picture story with a clear, logical progression. You could (a) give the story in order and ask them to simply tell the story, (b) give whole story jumbled up, (c) give each student one picture which they must describe, (d) give half of the story - the students have to predict/invent the other half.
‘A boy walked down the street’.
Give the students a basic sentence, e.g. ‘A boy walked down the street.’ The competition is to make the longest sentence they can by adding as many words as they can to the sentence, e.g. ‘A fair-haired, blue-eyed American boy walked quickly and confidently down the narrow, dark street.’ Good for improving writing and for adjective order.
T-shirts that tell a story
Ask students to bring to class (or simply describe) one, two or three T-shirts that have some personal significance to them. They give a short presentation to the class explaining the significance. This allows the students to learn about each other in a relaxed, interesting away.
Opposites dictation
Dictate a story telling students to write down the opposite of what they hear. The idea of ‘opposite’ here is relative, but this is a positive thing. For example ‘an old woman’ could become ‘an old man’, ‘a young woman’, ‘a young girl’, etc. After the dictation students compare their stories and see how similar they are. Then ask students to turn their dictations back into the original that you dictated.
D-I-Y Story Dictation
Dictate a story but from time to time leave gaps in the story for students to create their own version of it. For example, ‘An old woman was sitting in a bar. (Describe her).’
Dictionary story
Flick through dictionary, stop at different pages and say the first word on the page. After five or six words, tell the students they must write in pairs or small groups a story which contains all the words. A variation is asking the students in pairs to think of six words beginning with S. Then they must write a story including those words. Then they read out their stories and others must listen to identify the six words.
Headline prediction
Give students unusual headlines from the news. They must predict what the stories were about exactly. They then read the stories to check their predictions.
Graded readers
As follow-up activities after reading a reader:
1) Write a summary or review
2) Show an illustration from the book and ask them to explain events before, during and after
3) Role-play – they become a character in the story and give an interview
4) They are journalists and write up the story as a news article
5) Make a poster to advertise the book
6) They are directors of a film adaptation. How would they adapt the story for Hollywood? Who would they choose as actors? Would they change the title?...
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