Archive for September 12th, 2014

This is an idea to include an exercise where students compose a followup to a story. This exercise would involve imagination, creativity, active listening, storytelling and growth mindset elements. It is a YCISL workshop variation on improvisation such as one can view on the television show “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”

There are several ways that this exercise could be set up:

1. Use a passage from a book. Good starts might be a mystery that reveals a setting at the start. Another might be from a biographical story where life path choices need to be made.

2. Have students tell a part of their personal story and others would compose a story about how the future turned out.

3. Create a Mad Libs type of passage and have students fill in the blanks. Then the students would have to continue the passage using the context created by the Mad Libs part of the exercise.

4. Use a cartoon strip and blank out the last frame. Have students create that frame on their own.

Option: this could also be made to be a PostIt brainstorming (divergent thinking) exercise with participants coming up with as many continuations to the story as they can.