In collaborative storytelling multiple participants work together to create a story. Role-playing games have students each take a character, develop it and write from the perspective of the character. Round-robin games give students turns writing a portion of the story. Each student can be responsible for writing a sentence, a certain number of words, a set period of time or a specific section of the story, such as the introduction, climax or resolution.
Writing prompts are statements or questions directing a students' writing; they can also be single words or visual or auditory cues. To turn the concept of writing prompts into a classroom game, a teacher can fill a bag with pieces of paper that either contain single words or a starting sentence; students pull a piece of paper from the bag and write based on what they've selected. Another option is to place several images at the front of the room and have students pick one to write about.
Autobiography writing is a tool to make students feel connected to their writing. Some ideas of autobiographical writing assignments include instructing students to write an event from their lives in the third person or write the introduction to their autobiography. A twist on autobiography writing is to have students pair up and tell another student a personal story; the students then write about the story they are told as if it were their own experience.
In story retelling students read a work of literature and then rewrite it in their own words. This task -- targeting both reading comprehension and writing skills -- can be made more challenging by using works not written in modern English, such as Shakespeare. Students can work together in groups to break down the story into key components, each group writing a different part of the story and then read the story together as a whole. Alternatively, a grab bag of single out-of-context sections from the story can be created, in which students are asked to turn the section they select into a complete story.