Two ways to create ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ stories

As part of our How We Organize Ourselves unit about decision-making, students planned and wrote ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ stories. In case you’re not familiar with these, the reader takes on the main role and the story is written in the second person (e.g. “You are walking down the street and you see your friend”). The story sets up multiple scenarios and provides different options for the reader. They are directed to different pages based on their decisions.

My students started by planning their stories on paper, including multiple decisions, dilemmas and alternative endings. They then drafted and published them digitally.

Students are planning ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ stories. Tomorrow, they’ll start creating Google Slides with links to different scenarios. Thanks for your help, @mrkpyp! A great connection between our fiction writing unit and our Decisions unit. #VSAHKG #HowWeOrganizeOurselves pic.twitter.com/FNiVIuagEK

— Adam Hill (@AdamHillEDU) June 25, 2019

With short video demonstrations, here are two simple ways to create digital ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ stories:

Google Slides

Using Google Slides, the decision options can be provided by hyperlinking the text and directing the reader to different slides. Simply highlight the text and click the link icon (or Command+K shortcut on Mac). Click ‘Slides in this presentation’ and find the correct destination slide. This is much easier to do if the slides already have titles because the titles will appear in the list. You can test the links and follow the story in the ‘Present’ mode.

Although I’m less familiar with them, I’m sure that this can also be done in other presentation tools such as PowerPoint and Keynote. Just look for the ability to link slides.

Google Forms

‘Add section’ is a little-known feature of Google Forms that is often useful when creating surveys and quizzes. Furthermore, by using ‘Go to section based on answer’, the user’s answers can determine which section of the form to progress to. Click the three dots to see this feature. Simply write the story in sections and provide decisions in the form of multiple choice questions. Then, determine which section the form should go to based on the answers. Again, it’s very useful to name the sections in advance because the names will appear in the list. Use ‘Preview’ (the eye icon) to check that the links are working properly.

In both of these methods, images can be added to individual slides/sections to add visuals to the stories. I wrote about using internet images in a previous post. This would be a good opportunity to discuss the importance of using copyright-free images. Finally, the students added their stories to Seesaw for their classmates and parents to enjoy.

These are just two ways to make ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ stories. To take it to the next level, Scratch has also been suggested as a way for students to code the stories. How else might you make one? Please share your ideas below.

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