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Six to eight 50-minute sessions
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| Overview |
 This lesson can be used for literature circles reading the same adventure story, and will combine both reading and writing skills. After discussing the various stories, students will plan their own adventure story. They will be divided into smaller groups for each split in the story until finally the students are writing their own endings. Using Web-authoring software, groups will create their own Web sites with the parts of the story hyperlinked to each other. Web pages may be uploaded to the Internet if school policy allows, or they can be saved on CDs and projected for class viewing.
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| From Theory to Practice |
This lesson combines reading and writing in a collaborative, small-group learning experience. It utilizes technology, specifically Web page design, group and individual work, and student self-assessment. As Wilhem and Friedemann (1998) state, "[D]esigning hypermedia projects encourages students to name themselves as readers, writers, and learners and supports them in the achievement of better reading, idea development, sense of audience, classifying, organizing, collaborating, representing understandings, revising, and articulating and applying critical standards about the quality of their work" (15). From cooperative learning to self-reflection, this lesson reinforces the literacies that students need for success in and out of school.
Wilhem, Jeffrey D., and Paul D. Friedemann, with Julie Erickson. 1998. Hyperlearning: Where Projects, Inquiry, and Technology Meet. York, ME: Stenhouse.
Further Reading
Dale, Helen. 1997. Co-authoring in the Classroom: Creating an Environment for Effective Collaboration. Urbana, IL: NCTE.
Daniels, Harvey, and Marilyn Bizar. 1998. Methods That Matter: Six Structures for Best Practices Classrooms. York, ME: Stenhouse.
Gruber, Sibylle, ed. 2000. Weaving a Virtual Web: Practical Approaches to New Information Technologies. Urbana, IL: NCTE.
Marlow, Bruce A., and Marilyn L. Page. 1998. Creating and Sustaining the Constructivist Classroom. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Zemelman, Steven, Harvey Daniels, and Arthur Hyde. 1998. Best Practice: New Standards for Teaching and Learning in America's Schools. 2e. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
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| Student Objectives |
Students will
- understand the structure of Choose Your Own Adventure stories.
- become familiar with the elements of fiction: setting, character, plot structure, conflict, and point of view.
- work in small groups to collaborate on writing their own adventure stories.
- understand writing in hypertext and publishing Web sites.
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| Instructional Plan |
Resources
Preparation
- Obtain access to computers and other software.
- Acquaint yourself with the method you choose for students to construct their Web pages, for example, Microsoft FrontPageŽ.
- Make copies of handouts and rubrics.
- Acquaint yourself with the format of Choose Your Own Adventure stories.
- Obtain copies of books or a way to give students access to the Web.
- Test the Webbing Tool Student Interactive on your computers to familiarize
yourself with the tool and ensure that you have the Flash plug-in installed.
You can download the plug-in from the technical
support page.
Instructions and Activities
Introduction
- Begin by going over with students the elements of fiction: setting, character development, plot structure, conflict, and point of view.
- Show students an example of a Choose Your Own Adventure book or one of the Choose Your Own Adventure stories online; Dunnbar Bound is a good example.
- If time permits share another story with the class.
- With the whole class explore the elements of the Choose Your Own Adventure story, including the unique second-person point of view which makes the reader the main character in the story. Then go over the Choose Your Own Adventure Instructions, giving a copy of the handout to each student.
Prewriting
- Divide students into small groups (ideally of four students each) and have them brainstorm ideas for their own Choose Your Own Adventure stories.
- The whole group will plot out the first section of the adventure using a Graphic Organizer.
- Based on the decisions you've made as you discussed the Graphic Organizer, use the Webbing Tool Student Interactive to create a customized outline of the choices for your story.
- The group should decide who will write each subsequent part of the adventure. They first divide into groups of two and then, finally, each student will write an individual ending to their adventures.
Drafting
- The whole group writes the first part of the adventure. Students should write their adventures with a word processor so that they can be copied into a Web page.
- Groups of two then write the first two threads of the stories.
- Finally, each student writes an individual ending to the stories, resulting in groups constructing Choose your Own Adventure stories containing four possible adventures.
- Students peer edit and revise their stories.
Publishing
- When groups have finished writing their stories, they will create a hyperlinked Web site using a Web-authoring program, html code, or a word processor. Here are instructions for constructing a simple Web site in FrontPageŽ.
- Each "choice" or thread the students wrote should be linked to the next choices/threads.
- Once groups have created the Web site, they should publish it on a disk, burn it to a CD, or upload it to a Web site.
Web Resources
- Dunnbar Bound
http://friend.ly.net/users/jorban/adventure/page01.html
- Interactive Choose Your Own Adventure story for and about children. A good example to share with the class.
- The Redwall Series
http://www.angelfire.com/wy/lemmingpie/redwallcyoa.html
- Choose Your Own Adventure stories based on the Redwall series. An added advantage to this site is that students can look at submissions from writers who write a Redwall-based adventure. Could be a real challenge to students.
- Lesson Author's Class Web Site
http://ps044.k12.sd.us/subweb/cybercomp_10
- Patricia Schulze's cyber composition class. Student examples are linked from the Student Pages page.
- CyberEnglish Page
http://www.tnellen.net/cyberenglish/webfolio.html
- Ted Nellen's original CyberEnglish site. Student-created Web pages can be found here.
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| Student Assessment/Reflections |
Part of this lesson should be evaluated by the students. Using the Student Reflective Assessment handout, have groups compile a reflective narrative tracing the steps they took in the process, what they had problems with, how they worked out their problems, and how they feel about their final project. Students could include individual assessments of their contributions to the group project.
Teachers may evaluate both the process and the final project by keeping anecdotal records of students' participation in the process. They may also wish to use the Web Page Rubric for group Web site projects.
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3 - Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
5 - Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
6 - Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
8 - Students use a variety of technological and information resources (e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.
11 - Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.
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