Storybuilder – Online Version 

EnTeam Academic Game

Purpose

To strengthen the collaboration of students and encourage them to write stories creative together.

Requirements 

  • Time: 30-50 minutes
  • Number of Players: 2 or more
  • Age range: Old enough to tell a story  
  • Space: Online 
  • Equipment: Video setup with internet access and breakout rooms, paper and pens or Google Docs.
  • Prerequisites: None

How to Play 

  1. Give the whole group the starting story sentence (ex. Once upon a time…).
  2. Divide the group into teams of no more than 8 players. 
  3. Set a time limit like 3 minutes to create a story. Players go into break out rooms.
  4. Each team will go in alphabetical order and each player can only contribute one sentence at a time. 
  5. Facilitator will write the story down in a Google document or piece of paper.
  6. Each team scores their story and presents their score to the whole group.
  7. After each round, debrief and strategize how you can get a higher score. 
  8. Each team can rotate stories if using Google documents. Repeat the same sequence but if you are rotating, you add to a new story that another team started. Make sure to establish the order that you will rotate stories.
  9. Debrief and rotate as many times as you can and continue improving your score. 
  10. At the end, you can read the creative stories that everyone wrote aloud!

Rules 

  1. Every participant has to participate in creating the story. 
  2. Be respectful of everyone’s creative ideas. 
  3. All stories must be appropriate.
  4. You only get bonus points if everyone in the team contributes. 

Scoring 

  • Every sentence written in each round is one point. If every member of your team participates, the team earns 3 bonus points per round.
  • After each round, you add scores from every team to get the whole group score. 
  • If the group’s score improves, everyone wins. If no, everyone loses. 

Debrief Questions

The purpose of debriefing is to develop strategies that will improve your performance and to recognize how these lessons apply to everyday life. To facilitate a successful debrief, facilitators must observe participants and ask engaging questions that spark thoughtful reflection. If we don’t debrief, we don’t learn!

What happened?

What did you see? What did you hear? What was the score?

What worked? What didn’t work?

How did people feel? What issue(s) came up? What issue(s) remain?

So what? 

What did we learn?

How does this experience relate to other experiences?

Why are we doing this? How is it relevant to us? 

Now what? 

How could we improve our score in this activity?

How can we work together better?

How could we apply lessons learned outside of the game? 

Digging Deeper 

  • Did anyone feel reluctant to share strategies?
    • Why? Are you still in a win-lose mindset?
    • If we are trying to improve collective achievement, who are you benefitting when you withhold strategies from other teams?

Debrief Chart (PDF)

Storybuilder (Online) – Game Packet (PDF)

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