Planes, trains and automobiles and a story too........

I love the idea of the traveling story. I think there are so many variations or takes on it. You could assign a topic or prompt, have students work in whole group or small group or put students in sections like introduction section, body section, and ending. You could also put it in a center and at some point over the week every students has to go and write, it could be continuous where you must just pick up where you left off. I also like the partner write version where partners take turns writing the sentences.

I can see where students might get a little frustrated if the story didn't go in the direction they wanted it to or if someone wasn't paying attention and maybe changed the tense or time of day but in a way the story didn't follow.

As a side note, while at Toys R Us this weekend in the game section they had what was called story cubes. It was a set of about 9 dice that had different pics on each side. You could roll the dice and write a story for example this is what was rolled: a sheep, ?, and airplane, a pyramid, a turtle and the story might go like this... A sheep and a turtle decided they wanted to go on vacation but they had questions about how to fly on a plane. They ended up in Egypt viewing the pyramids etc. You can use one die, all or some, it can be oral stories, written, group, individual etc. I think for most any grade level they would work.