Last week my students wrote collaborative stories on StoriumEDU using a fantasy deck that I designed based on Classcraft maps. The past two days, we’ve been sharing them.

StoriumEDU doesn’t have a way to share stories among students and the greater public (yet, my friends, yet.) Not to be deterred, we went analog, and filled up a couple of blank bulletin boards, too!

This wasn’t a peer review–more a celebration of writing. Since the writing was only online at StoriumEDU, the students all queued their stories to the opening scene. Then they left their Chromebook, moved to another person’s Chromebook, and read the story there.

To add more focus to students’ reading, each student also completed a quick sheet with four prompts.

  • Story one: What was the best example of word choice/phrasing in this story and who was the writer?
  • Story two: What was the best moment in this story, and who was the writer?
  • Story three: What was the best sentence in this story, and who was the writer?
  • Overall: What was your favorite story and why?

Every five minutes, students moved to a new story. After the third story, they cut apart their forms and stapled them to the bulletin boards.

Sure, this is an easy way to show and share student writing, but more importantly, I want students to be proud of their writing. I wanted them to see their writing and their name recognized by other students. I want them to feel that others enjoyed what they wrote. I want them to feel competent as writers, because so often students come into class saying over and over, “I’m no good at writing,” even if they are quite competent.

Later in the year we’ll get into more peer feedback and revision. For now, I just want them to be comfortable writing and, more importantly, sharing it.

Below is a copy of the sheet we used.