Choose Your Own Adventure

Lucy Smee

PREPARATION:

Write a short Choose Your Own Adventure story in the 2nd person. I wrote each section on a separate piece of paper and made a sort of flow chart as this made it less confusing. Each page had the ending, “Do you choice A (turn to Page xxx) or choice B (turn to Page xxx)?” I wrote a story with a prince, princess and a monster, as I knew they would understand the vocabulary. I put some pictures in as well (eg. sword). Then I assigned each piece of paper a random page number and wrote all those page numbers into the choice boxes. I then typed this up in Powerpoint and booked the AV Room.

PROCEDURE:

1. Begin by explaining that the students will read the story on the OHP and as a class, decide which course of action to take, A or B. Then go through the story and have a vote each time. I did it just by raising hands, as these girls don’t like to move around. The story was short, but there was death involved to make it more fun for the students. I tried to write the story so that they would die at least once and we would have to start again.
2. When they successfully reach a happy ending, explain that now they will write their own Choose Your Own Adventure story. Give the students the first page of their story. For example, “You are in your house by yourself. There is a knock at the door. Do you: A open the door or B keep the door closed and look out the window” Divide the class into 2 groups, A and B. Group A have taken the “A” course of action and must now write what happens. Group B have taken the “B” course of action. Give them a time limit in which to think of something, help them with the language and then have them think of two courses of action to take, A and B. Then, split Group A and B into smaller groups, so that now you have 4 groups of students. Repeat the activity on new paper. Remind the students that they can kill off the character, but do check that they don’t all keep killing them. Keep splitting up the students until you have a satisfactory length of story.
3. We wrote the story for the remainder of the first class and in the second class. Then I made their story into books and in the third class gave everyone a copy. I had them get into groups of 4 and make their way through the book.

NOTE:

I did this activity with my Reading Class, which has about 20 students, all of whom chose to do the class, and so are lots more motivated than the English II class. So their level of English is pretty good. It’s a time consuming class but everyone seemed to enjoy it, and they liked getting their books in the 3rd class.