Introduction

Having students write and produce a Choose your own adventure (CYOA) book or game is not a new idea and there are plenty of templates available for free on the internet.

The templates I am sharing here were created by an awesome Grade 4 teacher - Justin Birckbichler. I recommend reading his teaching blog.

Justin made two versions of the CYOA templates; first a teacher lead version in Google Slides and then, when he tried to make that into something for his students to create with and it didn't work, he made a student centred version using Google Forms.

Having students create their own stories teaches so many wonderful skills, and there is no reason why they couldn't do it with historical or scientific accuracy or content from almost any KLA. For example when teaching the Medieval Japan unit in Stage 4 History I had my students create a textbook covering all the content from the unit. It would be just as easy to have them create a CYOA game that had the player venturing through a medieval Japanese town, meeting the inhabitants and having some kind of journey.

This activity assumes you are working individually but you could co-create a game. If you do that make sure everyone has a copy of the edited version before the end of the session.

Activity

Step 1. Decide whether you want to make a teaching CYOA for your students to play with or a task that involves students creating their own games.

Step 2. Open the two appropriate files on your device using the links in the Equipment section. (below) Logged into your Google account, go to File and choose the Make a copy option for the Google Doc and Slide files. To make a copy of the Google Form click on the three dots in the top right hand corner and then click on Make a copy.

Teacher created CYOA

Step 3. Choose a learning intention for the game. (Why are your students making choices? What sort of things might they need to do before making a choice?)

Step 4. Write a simple story that links with your learning intention. For example in a maths based story maybe the character needs to complete some maths problems to move forward or solve a problem and write that answer in the student response section. In a LOTE game the student choices for progressing the story could be written in the language they are learning. In a game where the focus is on your students writing responses to the story or guessing what will happen next or explaining your choices make the story engaging to them, as the content doesn't matter as long as it will encourage them to write.

Step 5. Justin's version of this has the teacher only giving the students the slides that they have chosen and then supplies the next slides after the student has written and submitted their responses. In the teacher created example linked below Eric Curts has used some simple techniques to make the Slide interactive when in presentation mode. His how to guide can be found on the Apps User Group website.

Student created CYOA

Step 3. Choose a learning intention. (Why are your students writing this game? Do they need to do some research before they start writing or as part of the creation process?)

Step 4. Make some notes on how you think the activity would go, how long you would give students to work on the task and the kinds of choices or information you would want them to put into their story.

Step 5. Before you start writing the task out properly use the templates to create your own version of the task, it doesn't have to be perfect but you need to create your own version to see how the task works and to get a good idea of how much work would be involved in the students completing it.

Finishing up

Step 6. Before the end of the session share your game file with some of the people in your group for feedback.

You only have 15 mins for this session so it is unlikely that you will have a completed game/story ready before the end.

Equipment

Teacher created game templates

• Story Planner document
• CYOA template Slides deck

Student created game templates

• Story planner document
• CYOA template Google Form

Internet access and your Google account are needed to use these resources.