Creating Text Adventures to Develop Reading & Writing Skills

Text adventure games are a great way of really engaging students in reading. They get the chance to take some control of the narrative and find their own way through the story by making choices at various points in the narrative.

On the ‘TextAdventures’ site you can find lots of examples for your students to read, but if you log in you can also get your students to create an adventure themselves. You can give them an image and an introductory text to get started and tell them how many different stages the story should have, then get them working together exploring the different branches and possibilities at each turn. You can download the software to help you or develop the story in the browser and publish it on the site.

TextAdventures is great tool for collaborative writing projects and great to get students thinking about the potential consequences of different actions. I hope you find it useful. You can find links to many more tools like this and activities for the digital classroom in my ebooks at: http://peacheypublications.com/. All my ebooks are available for iOS and as PDF.

Sign up for my free twice monthly newsletter and download a free copy of Digital Tools for Teachers at: https://tinyletter.com/technogogy/ 

Related links:

• 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom
• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers 

 Best

Nik Peachey

Get Teens Writing with Gamified Writing Activities

Story Wars is a great gamified way to make writing creative and competitive.

Students read short chapters of the beginnings of stories and then have to submit the next chapter for the story.

The readers of the story can then vote for which new chapter they feel is the best continuation of the story. The one with the most votes becomes part of the story.

There are lots of stories in progress that students can add to or they can start their own. Each story has a fantastic image to help prompt the imagination.

The site is free, but there is a ‘Classroom’ version for $15 a month which makes all the stories your students create private and gives you the teacher the ability to give your students feedback on their submissions.

There is also a free iOS version for mobile devices.

Story Wars looks like an ideal way to get teens enthusiastic about reading and writing fiction.

I hope you and your students enjoy Story Wars. You can find links to many more tools like this and activities for the digital classroom in my ebooks at: http://peacheypublications.com/. All my ebooks are available for iOS and as PDF.

Sign up for my twice monthly free newsletter and get a free copy of Digital Tools for Teachers at: https://tinyletter.com/technogogy/ 

Related links:

• 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom
• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers 

 Best

Nik Peachey