About this activity
Ten story prompts that each start with trouble: a boy loses his dog at the park; a girl breaks her friend's toy; a class runs out of art supplies before a project; a boy is being teased at recess; the team's only ball goes over the fence; two friends want the same seat on the bus; a kid gets lost at the grocery store. Every prompt supplies the complication, which is the element students most often leave out of their own stories.
How to use it in a session
Ask for the problem and the solution as separate steps. Naming the problem first sounds redundant and is not — students frequently jump to a solution that does not address what actually went wrong. Then ask how the character felt, which is the missing third element in most narratives at this level. Twelve minutes covers two or three prompts properly.
What to listen for
Listen for solutions that resolve the problem rather than ending the story. He went home ends the story about the lost dog without solving anything, and students accept it because it stops. Watch the teasing and the shared-seat prompts, which are social problems with no physical solution — those require negotiation and are considerably harder than a lost object.
Carrying it home
Real problems in a day are story material. Asking what the problem was and how it got sorted out, at dinner, is the same structure applied to something the child cares about.
Questions
- What grades is this for?
- Second through fifth, for narrative structure work.
- Is it free?
- Yes, all ten prompts play with no account.
- Why supply the problem rather than let the student invent one?
- Because inventing a complication is the hardest part of narrative for most students. Supplying it lets all the effort go into the response and the resolution, which is where the structure is learned.