Future Storytelling (Speaking & Grammar)

Future Storytelling

Vivien Pálinkás


Part 1: The Game

Level & Learning Outcomes

Through this game, students will improve their speaking and writing skills while practicing the usage of future simple for scenarios that require immediate decisions about the future. Beyond this, they aimed to practice collaboration and communication in English with their classmates. As they have to vote at the end of this task, their listening skills, mainly listening for gist. 


Materials needed 

  • pen

  • paper

  • narrative story of the gamified classroom


Object of Game

To get a point after correctly using the necessary structure and creating the best story. 


Rules of Play

  1. Divide the group into equal teams.

  2. Instruction: “Imagine that you are walking on the street of Malware’s city and a Humanoid sees you and wants to attack you. What will you do in a situation like this? Write your ideas down and be ready to present them to the whole group as a role-play. One of you will be the narrator, the other one the Freedom Guardian, and the last one will be the Humanoid. You have five minutes to do this.”

  3. Students have to use will for this game.

  4. After the five minutes is up they have to come to the front of the classroom and act out their ideas.

  5. After everyone is finished with their presentation, the class anonymously votes on who was the best.

  6. The team that gets the most votes wins the game. 


Scorekeeping

The votes are counted by the teacher and they are also presented on the board. The teacher also reads the votes out loud to avoid giving the votes to the wrong team. 



Part 2: Reflection

I played this activity with sixth graders, and the main aim was to practice the usage of will for immediate decisions. This was our first role-playing activity together, as I had been their teacher for 1,5 weeks before this activity. During the activity, the whole group was truly active and discussed many different ideas in English, which was not expected from me because they are only sixth graders. As for their execution, most of the responses were good, and we could have discussed the problems that they had with their script. Concerning the students’ feelings, I can say that they were smiling throughout the whole activity which was a heart-warming experience because previously, they did not seem to enjoy my lessons. Another important thing that I noticed was that there was one student who could be considered as an outsider in the class but during this activity, he was also cooperating and seemed all in all happy which was also a truly good experience for me. 

Concerning Chou’s Octalysis model, I think this game could be connected to more than one drive. First of all, it is highly connected to epic meaning as there is a whole narrative story based on the fight against Malware and this activity is also connected to this.  Lastly, social influence was also part of this activity because the members of the group had to discuss their ideas and opinions in connection with the script and everyone had to modify it to be in accordance with the group’s decision. 

In terms of An’s model of gamification of learning, I think it is connected to competition and cooperation because the members of the team have to cooperate with each other but at the same time they are competing with the other teams. Personalization was also an element that was present in this game given the fact that there were no previously laid down constraints on what to write besides the requirement of using future simple in the sentences. Feedback was also present as all of the group applauded and the winners got their point while I also aimed to use different expressions that they did a great job. 

The reward for this activity, as was previously mentioned, was getting the point. As for the adaptability of this task, I think it could be easily adapted to any kind of classroom but if it is used as a single activity and not as part of many different activities, more clues and constraints should be needed to better elicit what we want from them. All in all, I truly enjoyed doing this activity, and in the future, I will use it in other classes. 




Part 3 Appendices

Appendix A: Narrative story of the gamified classroom

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