Collaborative Writing: Crafting a class "choose your own adventure" story

Adri wrote and illustrated a children's book:
The Very Fairy Princess Goes to Mars.

It's been an unusual few weeks in our class. I (Jason) was out on paternity leave for two weeks, and then the class was gone on the spring trip all of last week. We're finally all back together and at school now, so things are back to normal, if only for another week or so. 

Nick wrote and drew a comic in the style of
Berkeley Breathed (creator of Bloom County,
Outland, and others)

Our last full week together is still packed full of things to do. Many kids are wrapping up projects that they've been working on, and we'll be sharing and presenting our work to each other in the days ahead. Many projects are currently on display in the Middle School Commons, so take a peek if you find yourself in the building this week! 

Kit has been working on a comic adventure in the
style of Tintin creator Hergé

We also started a new writing project today, which has been a fun exercise in creative collaborative work. As a class, we're writing a Choose Your Own Adventure story. We started out by brainstorming some details about two characters, then began pitching in ideas as I typed the story onto a large computer screen. We quickly brought our characters to a point in the story where they had two options, and then we broke into two smaller groups to begin writing them. After advancing those two story lines, each of those branched, creating even smaller groups. As it stands, we have six possible stories in the work, and we'll continue to branch off until each student writes their own ending, which means there will be at least 22 possible outcomes of the story. 

Marcellin adapted the design of the Wright Brothers famous
plane to make it more suited to the atmosphere of
Mars

Rereading what I just wrote makes it seem a little complicated, which is fair, because it has been. But it's also been very fun, and everyone has worked really well together. 

We'll continue this project this week, but  if you're interested in checking out our story so far, click here. (Disclaimer: This is decidedly still a work in progress.) 

Eleanor wrote a short story in the style of author
Wendy Mass