Tag Archives: shared writing

Periodic table of story telling – story starter activities

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The Periodic Table of Storytelling  is one of those special treats that comes through your feed and gets your mind buzzing with ideas of how it could be used with students.

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As well as being pretty funny, the table covers most of the major story types and character arcs, making it a great tool for engaging students in creative writing.

Each story element has an identifier, name and is grouped under one of the following categories – structure, setting, modifiers, plot devices, heroes, villains, archetypes, character modifiers, meta tropes, production and audience reaction.

Ideas for use with students

  • Give each student in the class one story element, making sure that all categories are represented. (You could make coloured cards for each element).
  • Ask them to form small groups (3-4) and collaborate on a story that incorporates all their individual story elements. This could easily be a homework assignment or even a competition with time limits
  • You could mix up the activity by asking them to write in different genres or mediums – film, play, poem, short story, tv show etc.
  • To make this an individual task, give each student three cards and ask them to include all three elements
  • You could also use these story elements to describe the books you’re reading. This would be a great way to build a shared vocabulary for understanding story and transferring knowledge of one story to other narratives
  • The story elements could be a prompt for a library creative writing challenge – how many story elements can you get in your story? or even a weekly writing challenge with one element as the focus each week
  • Put story element cards into a box and students choose one (or more) to prompt a free writing task

These kinds of forced association activities are a great way to get kids (and adults!) thinking creatively. If you have any other ideas or find something that works well for your students, let us know.

Interactive writing and note taking with Meeting Words

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Recently I attended an online seminar with Howard Rheingold, an advocate of using technology mindfully. As the session began, Howard directed participants towards a shared note taking space set up using the Meeting Words site. As the session progressed participants added notes in the shared space. They pasted in links mentioned by Howard, made their own notes and shared ideas. It was an interesting addition to the session and means that there is now a lasting record of the seminar.

Meeting Words works in a similar fashion to the shared document editor in Google Drive. Most of the screen is taken up with a simple shared note taking space and a chat window appears on the right. Every participant’s entries  are colour coded, giving a visual representation of each contributor. Text can be overwritten or replaced by other participants and any changes appear in real time on screen.

Each participant’s contribution is colour coded.

As the name suggests, Meeting Words is perfect for taking notes collaboratively instead of relying on one person to  catch every piece of information. It would also be a great way to work on shared projects, such as group assignments or curriculum planning. But the site could also have more creative applications.

Meeting Words would be a great way to do interactive, shared or modelled writing with a group of students. Teachers could even assist by adding in comments, helping make revisions or using the chat window to suggest ways the story might progress. There is even a time slider function to see how the piece has progressed from start to finish.

Meeting Words is easy to set up, users can start contributing to the document without needing to login, and the colour coded text means that you can easily see what has been contributed. While the tool has some similarities to Google Drive’s document editor, these clever features make it well worth exploring.