dcf.cymru stimulus sheet · English · Year 7

Four story starters

Your group picks one starter. Everybody in the group writes part of the same story.

Starter 1 — The screen that showed the wrong room

The screen on the classroom computer went black in the middle of the register. When it flickered back on it was not showing the desktop. It was showing a live picture of a room none of us recognised: a desk, a cold cup of tea, and a chair that had only just been pushed back.

Useful to know: the room is somewhere in the school. The clock on its wall is eleven minutes fast.

Starter 2 — The tablet in the library basement

Behind the broken shelving in the library basement, Mali found a tablet under a sheet of bubble wrap. It had no maker's name, no charging port and no cracks, and it switched itself on when she picked it up. There was one icon on the screen. It was labelled Yesterday.

Useful to know: the battery shows 4%. Nothing in the story can charge it.

Starter 3 — Twenty-two days of rain

It rained on Aberdyfi for twenty-one days without stopping. On the twenty-second morning the rain stopped so suddenly that people came out of their houses to check. The puddles along the harbour wall had not drained away, and in the flat grey light every single one of them was glowing faintly purple.

Useful to know: the glow is brighter in puddles closest to the sea, and it hums.

Starter 4 — The quiet new pupil

Everyone decided the new pupil in Year 7 was just shy. She ate lunch on her own, she never put her hand up, and she wrote left-handed and right-handed depending on the day. Then, in the Wednesday science practical, she picked up a beaker that had been on the tripod for four minutes and did not flinch.

Useful to know: she is desperate for nobody to make a fuss.

Handover rules — read these before you start

  1. Only one person writes at a time. Everybody else reads.
  2. You must use what the writer before you left: their characters, their weather, their problem. You may add, you may not undo.
  3. Leave the next writer something to do — finish on a question, a decision or a door opening, never on "and then they went home".
  4. Write your initials and the time in the handover log on your worksheet before you pass it on.
  5. If you disagree with what the last writer did, do not delete it. Write a comment saying why, and carry on.

Sentence starters for a handover