Interactive Storytelling
Prerequisite:
Open to students entering grade(s):
Session 1 AM: Grade 5 - 8
Session 2 AM: Grade 6 - 8
Course Description:
“Gamify” your storytelling! This course is for students interested in designing and writing stories that allow the audience or reader to make choices. Venture into the dark cave, or find a way around it? Help your friend keep a secret, or reveal it to the whole school? Fans of “Dungeons and Dragons”-style role-playing games, choose-your-own-adventure books, and adventure video games will get to create, share, and play their own interactive stories, sharpening their writing and narrative analysis skills, and deepening their understanding of narrative form structure along the way. We’ll explore a range of interactive and visual storytelling forms from printed books to online text adventures, board games to trading-card games, and even live theater to help bring stories to life!
Learner Outcomes:
Students will:
- Develop skills in descriptive, narrative, and persuasive writing
- Analyze the use and effects of stylistic features and conventions used in narrative fiction and non-fiction
- Understand the relationship between author and audience, and practice storytelling through a variety of media and online platforms to engage with an audience
- Practice public speaking and oral storytelling skills
- Assess and reflect upon the quality of their own writing and that of their peers based on an agreed upon set of standards-based criteria
Methodology:
Students will engage in fun, interactive stories from a variety of media, including text-based, game-based, performance-based, and visual. They will analyze these methods of storytelling first as readers or audiences, identifying the types of stylistic choices and techniques available and interpreting their effects. Then, students will create their own forms of interactive stories, taking their work through a process of brainstorming, planning, writing, editing, and revision before presenting or publishing their work for an audience of their classmates, peers, and parents.
Assessment:
Students will create three "products" throughout the course through three different mediums, including written, visual/technology-based, and one of their choice. Each product will be assessed based on criteria that are tailored to the medium of the product students create. In addition, feedback and reflection will play a key role in helping students understand how to improve their work. Learning to be better storytellers will also help students know how to better respond to other great writers and storytellers, and students will also be assessed on their analysis and commentaries of texts.