Making a Story Together - High school and elementary connections for authentic audience and engagement

We recently tried another interactive story experiment connecting older students with younger students. As always, the goal with this is to encourage reading in the earlier grades and creativity with the older students. All feedback so far indicates this was a success.

I've written previously about ways to do this with comics or just writing in a Google Doc and one very different method with less input from the younger students.

This story we just finished up is more like the latter case, with a twist inspired by our Boomwriter activity from last winter. The final result can be read at the links below, but first here is the process we used.

• I found five high school students who were interested in trying this and their teacher agreed they could work with me. I managed it all through Google Classroom.
• I also gave a survey to elementary students asking them to name some characters, choose a general setting and choose some character traits. This was presented to all students in grades K - 4, but only a few classrooms really participated. 
• In pairs or individually, the high school students wrote short introductions to a story that fit the criteria generated by that survey. Alone or in groups, they generated a total of three different starters.
• I made a second survey presenting those story starters to the elementary class so they could pick their favorite.
• For the next round of writing, the high school students added to the story starter that the elementary students liked best. Again, each of those groups or individuals wrote the next part as they wanted the story to turn out. That again produced three different possible stories. 
• We continued this for a couple rounds of elementary students voting on their favorite, writing the next parts, voting again and so on. Along with asking which story the elementary students liked best, I'd also ask for suggestions for dialogue or action. It gave them a fun chance to be creative.
• Then since school was getting out soon, I had the high school students work together on bringing the story to a conclusion.

As you might imagine, the students wanted it to be humorous. That and the disjointed way we built the story definitely made it silly. You can read the story here:

• This page has the first three parts.
• This page has the final parts.
• I also had the students at the high school write these short bios so the younger students could get to know them.

The teachers told me that both groups of students, young and old, really got into the activity. We had to rush a few stages, so by the last round only one 3rd grade class was still voting. Their input showed enthusiasm, though, and the teacher told me they were excited to see where the story was going.

Which Method Is Best?

Having tried a few different methods now, I have to say my original approach (again, you can read it here) is still my favorite. In that one, the readers gave their input on the direction of the upcoming chapter, then the writers wrote it how they wanted to. I prefer that because:

• The writers have more control (and therefore more buy-in) over the outcome of each chapter.
• More importantly, they won't be disappointed when the ideas they worked hard on don't get picked. As I said with the Boomwriter activity, I can tell some students lose enthusiasm when their work isn't chosen.

There are still some downsides. You'll have to manage multiple stories if you have multiple groups of writers. Along with this, the readers will probably not be reading every story. They too will work in groups and probably will read only one or two different stories.