Story Dominoes is a great concept. Just get a lot of varying pictures. Cut them up and students in groups of three/four, use them to tell “random” stories.

One student turns over a card to begin. Then the next, turns over a card and continues. Lots of creativity involved.You can also extend this or make this into a writing activity. After telling the story, the students can collaboratively write the story using the pictures.

Here’s a nice handout of example pictures. Also, I’ve made a nice game – Story Dominoes. Find the ppt on EFL Classroom 2.0 HERE. Print the slides and use as a handout in class!

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There are several steps to making a storybook and I’ll use my own Mr. X’s incredible Day/Yesterday as an example. Get the ppt/video here for use with students.

1.  Tell the story with students. Play a video / use a storybook / use a ppt but pictures are essential! Go slow and exaggerate and use your voice/gestures to communicate vocabulary and content/context.

2.  Students re-tell the story. Note the vocabulary for the story on the board and students use this to make sentences to retell the story. Or, just show pictures and use them as a prompt to retell the story. See how I used Voicethread to retell the Mr. X story. But you can just take the words off the ppt and use a picture only ppt.

3. Writing. Students are now more comfortable with the story and vocabulary. Get them to write 6-10 sentences to outline the story. For each sentence , provide a prompt on the board for lower level students. Higher level students can add more information for that sentence number. The teacher monitors and helps correct/edit. I use this worksheet for Mr. X.

4. Bookmaking.  Give students some sheets of A4. They fold in half and staple to make the book. Or fold again and cut the folds to make a mini book (students usually like this smaller book more!). Students cut and paste their pictures into the book and also write their text from the worksheet. Color, make a title page, borders and personalize.

5. Present/Publish. Students can read their books to the class or in small groups. Sharing is a must! Make a library for your student produced books! 

You can make books about just vocabulary also. You can even use Tar Heel Reader – to get pictures and inspiration for alphabet and vocabulary books. I highly recommend it and if you want to make an electronic book, get a password code and impress your students!

This post was submitted by David Deubelbeiss.

1. Give each student a blank piece of paper.

2. Ask them to fold it “hamburger”, once, twice, three times. Unfold!

3. They will see 8 blocks for writing. In the first block ask them to write a sentence prompt… something exciting for example. “A man walked into a bank with a gun and ……” Tell them to finish the sentence.

4. Students pass their paper to their left and after reading the sentence on the paper, add their own sentence.

5. Continue passing the sentences along until the page is full. The last student should try to write something that concludes the story.

6. The student gets back their story and reads it. Read some outloud to share or have students read them in groups.

While students are writing, they should also be encouraged to correct their classmates writing! This will help get them to begin peer editing.

Another “wrinkle” is to have them only read the sentence before and then fold down the paper before they pass it on….creates a more random, funny, story.  

Another “wrinkle”. I also like doing this with gossip. Write some gossip gambits on the board. ( I heard it through the grapevine / the world on the street is / It’s common knowledge that… / I heard that … / Don’t pass this around but… / ). The first student uses one and writes some gossip about the student on their right. Pass the paper and continue the gossip! It gets hilarious!

This post was submitted by David Deubelbeiss.

Then, ask the students to write another well known story from the point of view of another character. Cinderella – Step Sister / Jack and the Beanstalk – the Giant / Little Red Riding Hood – the wolf etc….

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The best and easiest way to “teach” a story is to tell it through prediction. Get the students in a comfortable area if possible and read them the book, showing the pictures. You can also use all the great stories on EFL Classroom 2.0, if you have a computer and screen.

Start telling the story and at a good point stop and ask, “What’s going to happen next?” Let students tell each other or the class. Then continue to see if they are right. Stop again, and ask them to predict….continue doing this until the end of the story.

A good extension would be to have the students rewrite the story in their own words. Or stop the story before the end and have them write their own ending! Then share the “real” ending. 

A great story for this, available is The Eyebrow Story. Students love this one!

This post was submitted by David Deubelbeiss.

1.  Photocopy these stories (I like to use funny stories with a punchline but you could use any stories, folktales work well too) and give one to a student (one of your better students). Ask the student to go out of the classroom and read it carefully.

2. Tell or read the rest of the students a story and tell them to listen carefully because if they guess the ending, you’ll give them a prize. Stop before the punchline and ask them if they can guess the punchline.

3. Bring in the student who is outside. Ask them to retell their story to the class, stopping before the ending/punchline. Students listen and guess the ending.

4. Then, the class takes turn to tell the first story, the teacher told. The student who went outside tries to guess the ending.

5. Give all students a story. Give them 3-5 minutes to understand and read, ask any questions about the text.  Then, put students in groups of 3-4 and each student tells their story to others. Stopping so others can guess the punchline.

6. Give students in each group a number. The “1s” form a group. The “2s” etc… They retell their story a second time (and will do much better!).

7.  Return to the first group. Students then must retell a story they were told by others in the last group!

8. Finish up by asking what were the best stories. Get some better students to retell to the whole group!

If you’d like to refer your student to similar stories with audio or use the audio in class – go HERE for my presentation Funny Stories. Lots more on the story page of EFL Classroom , all in audio!

This post was submitted by David Deubelbeiss.