Skeleton stories, emotive word stories, scaffolding stories
Procedure (basic scaffold):
a) In the first step, five words are selected (see below) and written on the board or on a piece of paper.
b) These five words represent the scaffold or skeleton, around which each student writes a story. These five words must be used in every story (possibly highlighted).
c) Finally, the texts are read out loud, discussed and/or hung on the wall. It is exciting to see how many different “story bodies” emerged from the same “skeleton”. It will be interesting to discuss and assess how the students mastered the task of including the five skeleton words into their texts.
Remarks:
The process of selecting five words:
- The teacher goes around the class with a dictionary, a book or a magazine. Five students take turns to randomly open the book and point to a word with a pencil.
- All students note down a few words on pieces of paper. These are then collected and shuffled; different students pick five pieces of paper, these are used as the scaffolding or skeleton.
Variants:
- Instead of involving the whole class in this activity, it is also suitable for just one or two level groups if the students are well acquainted with the procedure.
- Instead of five words, it is also possible to select just three or four words. It is not recommended to use more than five words.
- Phrases or short sentences can also be used as the skeleton or scaffold instead of individual words.
- Christa and Emil Zopfi (1995, p. 49) suggest a nice variation of this exercise: each student can request a story in which three to five things or words occur. S/he writes these words on a piece of paper and passes it on to another student. The second student then writes a story based on the particular words requested and returns it to the first student as a gift.
(Variation: the “wish lists” are placed in a basket, each child picks a list and writes a story based on it). Extension: parents or family members are asked to provide such a list, and then receive the story as a gift. (see also 3, “wishing-word stories”).