Chain stories

A free writing activity which practises the past tense and narrative linking words

Divide the class into groups of six
_ Write the following on the board :
One night
When
Suddenly
Meanwhile
Then
In the end
_ Each student in a group writes the first sentence of the story. They must begin this first sentence with " One night"
( see above) and the story must be written in the past tense
_ Each student then passes the paper to the next student in the group.
_ All the students now have the first sentence of a story. They must then add a second sentence to it, this time using the word "When "
_ They pass on the paper and the process continues, each time adding another sentence using the prompts from the board until the story is finished with a sentence containing
" In the end "
_ Students can read out a selection of the best stories. They'll probably be very bizarre, though:)

NOTE : I even did a speaking lesson by putting 7 country names on the board with their most famous tourist attractions and told the groups to pick one. Then they had to make a mindmap on what problems they faced while they were travelling "there" ( maybe their plane was hijacked, the ship was attacked by the pirates etc...) The thing was one student from the group started talking about the problems, he talked for about a minute or two then I stopped him and it was the other student's turn in the same group to continue where he stopped. They all added an interesting element to the story of their own and they loved this activity!