Choose Your Own Adventure

As part of the Narrative or Descriptive Writing units, and especially during Christmas holiday time when student effort starts to wane, I like to use Choose Your Own Adventure as a summative task for Term 1. I was inspired by Mr Steltman's session at the Pedagogy Before Technology 2 Conference in Summer 2017 (OTF). The link for his interactive presentation is found here.

Prior to launching this task, I make sure I use other mentor texts and mini-lessons to cover the following topics:

• Plot Elements (Ideas) - Introduction of characters, setting, rising action, conflict, climax, resolution

• Organization - Sequence of story using transition words; using a story map to track the story

• Word Choice - Use of a thesaurus to look for more powerful nouns, verbs, and adjectives; enhanced speaker tags

• Choose Your Own Adventure Style - How to create paths and choices in a story that show equal opportunity

• Tone (Voice) - How the choice of words to describe a setting or character can set the tone for the piece

• Compound-Complex Sentences (Fluency) - Use of coordinating conjunctions for compound sentences and subordinating conjunctions for complex sentences. Intentional use of sentence length for variety.

• Mechanics (Conventions) - Use of Quotations Marks - Use of indenting, punctuation, quotation mark exercises.

• Media Literacy - How to create a picture background; using contrasting text with a semi-opaque background; using font size/colours appropriately; using hyperlinks from one slide to another