Story Cubes – an Innovative and Creative Board Game – Perfect for EFL Teaching

Andreja Drašler Zorič, Slovenia

Andreja Drašler Zorič is a teacher of English as a foreign language and she holds a Master's Degree in English methodology. She works at Vito Kraigher School (OŠ dr. Vita Kraigherja Ljubljana) in Slovenia where she teaches EFL to students aged 11 to 15. She has been teaching English at primary, secondary and tertiary level since 2005. E-mail: adraslerzoric@gmail.com

Do you feel your students should exercise their minds more? Do you want to spice up your lessons with an innovative game? Do you believe in the use of stories in the EFL classroom? If yes, story cubes will quench your teaching thirst for all of the above!

Storytelling lessons are usually teacher-oriented; the students listen and after the story they do follow-up activites. Playing with story cubes is different because the students take an active role – they become the storytellers. It is a fun, creative, and motivating board game, where students toss the cubes and include the words (images from the cubes) in their stories in writing or storytelling. It is a great storytelling / creative writing scaffolding strategy, as the images give students structure to their storytelling.

What I use in my classes with students aged 11 to 15 is a set of seven story cubes, a DIY variant of Rory’s Story Cubes. Each cube has a different picture on each face, which makes 42 different pictures and even more different ways how to tell a story. Personally, I find it best if students tell stories in small groups, as they feel more comfortable and relaxed. I ask a student to toss the cubes and sort them in whichever way he or she prefers to tell the story. When a student uses up all the images in a story, the game ends. The stories told are often very funny because the cubes offer a variety of pictures. If high achievers do not find story cubes game challenging, they can use up all seven images in a sentence, provided it still makes sense or a meaningful story. Should low achievers find it demanding, they can compose their thoughts by writing sentences on a piece of paper first and organize their storytelling in writing. If you worry that the stories might be similar to one another, I can reassure you that there are nearly 280,000 different combinations if you use seven cubes. If you use the original Rory’s Story Cubes (a set of nine cubes), there are over 10 million combinations! Also, the images on the cubes can denote several things, for example a picture of a question mark can evoke words, such as ask, wonder, bewildered, puzzled, questioned, etc. Much depends on the level of your students’ English and their creativity, for example an image of a heart can mean heart, love, heart attack, fall head over heels, infatuation, attraction, etc. Even though it is a challenging task, the students usually master it because they do not perceive this activity as learning but as playing games. It is a demanding activity because the students are forced to think outside the box, as there is no solution or key to this task, but to use their own imagination.

There are many ways how to play this game, and sometimes students think of new ones. You can modify this activity by group-storytelling i.e. each student integrates one picture into the story. You can have a creative group writing activity – each group of students writes their own story together, with the help of the story cubes. You can toss the cubes, take a photo of them, project the photo onto the screen, and have a creative writing contest – each student writes a story, and the best one wins. If you like, you can make a grammar-oriented activity with the help of story cubes – you ask students to form questions, and the answer should be the image on the cube, for example the image of a gift – »What do we usually get at Christmas?«.

There are a number of reasons why storytelling / story writing with story cubes works great in EFL teaching, as it develops speaking / writing skills, expands students’ vocabulary, it stretches students’ imaginations, and it gives sense of shared experience and team-work, when working in groups.

Students love playing games regardless of their age and language level. Tossing cubes makes it even more special because it has a sort of “gambling feel” to it – students cannot tell which combination of pictures will appear, so it is great fun too. All in all, nothing can go wrong in storytelling, as there are no right or wrong answers; just simply let your students’ imaginations run wild.

Sources

Drašler Zorič, A. (2015). Storytelling with blocks – teaching outside the box. Teacher develoment SIG Newsletter 71. Available at http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk

www.storycubes.com

Please check the Methodology & Language for Kindergarten Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Methodology & Language for Primary Teachers course at Pilgrims website.