Cover lesson · English · Year 7 · Beginner

Collaborative story writing

DCF: Interacting and collaborating → Collaboration

Name: Class: Date:

Cover teacher — you need no subject knowledge

Print: this sheet, one per pupil, and the stimulus sheet "Four story starters", one per group of four. If the room has computers, each group works in one shared document (Word Online or Google Docs) with all four pupils added as editors. If there are no computers the lesson runs exactly the same on paper — the groups pass one sheet of lined paper round instead of taking turns at a keyboard.

Run: 5 min put pupils in fours and let them pick a starter · 5 min agree roles and fill in the group contract below · 4 × 8 min writing relay, one writer at a time (call "swap" loudly) · 8 min groups read the whole story aloud in their group and fill in the review box · 2 min tidy. Keep the relay strict: a writer who is not writing is reading.

Collect: this sheet from every pupil. If the groups worked on paper, collect the story sheets too. If they worked online, ask one pupil per group to leave the document open on the screen or share it with the class teacher.

What you are doing

In a group of four you are writing one story together, not four stories. Each of you writes one part of it, in turn, and each part has to build on what the person before you wrote. By the end you should have a story with a beginning, a complication, a turning point and an ending — and a record of who did what.

Step by step

  1. 5 min — Read the four story starters. As a group, agree on one. You must all agree before anyone writes.
  2. 5 min — Fill in the group contract below: who writes in which order, and what your story's main character wants.
  3. 32 min — The relay. Each writer gets 8 minutes. Everybody else reads what is being written and thinks about how they will carry it on. Fill in a row of the handover log every time the story moves on.
  4. 8 min — Read the finished story aloud in your group. Complete the review box: one thing that worked, one thing that does not join up.

Group contract

Story starter we chose
Main character's name
What that character wants
Where and when it happens
Writing order (initials 1–4)

Handover log

Fill in one row each time the story passes to the next writer.

Turn Writer What I added What I left for the next writer
1 — opening
2 — the problem grows
3 — the turning point
4 — the ending

My paragraph — plan it here before you type

Two lines of notes, not sentences. You have eight minutes at the keyboard and you should not waste them thinking.

Review box

One moment where the parts joined up well
One thing that contradicts itself (a name, a time, the weather…)
One sentence we would cut

Success criteria

If you finish early