Half-and-half Stories

For this session, I told the children they were going to start a story, then swap and have someone else finish it off next week. As a stimulus, I put a selection of photos in an envelope: eight faces and four 'hazards'. They were asked to choose one or two characters and one hazard to work with. We discussed possibilities for the hazards, such as the fact that a snake can be venomous OR friendly and someone's much-loved pet. Then I asked them to focus on one character and, working very fast, fill in as many of the gaps on the Character Questions sheet as they could in five minutes. These were designed to give some flesh to the bones rather than form the plot of the story, though they could have been used for either.

This week they have all begun a story, and next week will complete someone else's.