Shake Things Up with Storycubes!
Story Cubes are a fun addition to your English study toolkit! Here are some ways you can use them in your autonomous learning program.
(To find Story Cubes in your location or to have them shipped to you go to http://www.storycubes.com.)
Shake up your Vocabulary
1. Choose one of the cubes.
2. Think of all the words you can for each image on that cube. For example:
3. Write or tell a story using those words.
4. Change the story from present tense to past or future tense.
5. Change the story from first person (I,me) to third person (he, she) or vice versa.
Shake up your vacation
1. Let Story Cubes plan a vacation (real or imagined) for you. Shake all nine Voyages Story Cubes.
2. Using a map of any location you choose, find the places you could go or the activities you could do that match the cube images and then write or narrate your trip’s itinerary. For example:
I will visit the U.S.A. and take pictures in the Boundary Waters. Next, I will backpack the Appalachian Trail. After that, I will go to Florida to go fishing for Blue Crabs. On my way to Texas, I will stop in New Orleans to eat some of their famous Gumbo! Once I get to Texas, I will listen to the music in Austin. I’m hoping to see some snakes in the desert of Arizona. Swimming in the Pacific Ocean has always been a dream of mine, so I plan to go to the beach in San Diego. After touring around sunny California, I will head up to rainy Seattle, Washington before completing my trip with a drive through the Rocky Mountains.
The Story Cubes Challenge
Share how you used Story Cubes for your language learning and post it in the comment section or on AutonomousLearner.com’s Facebook page.
About the Author
Lori Michele Kelley
Lori has Master’s degree in TESL and has taught English and Intercultural Communication in the United States, Turkey, South Korea, Indonesia, and Thailand. She also develops and conducts teacher development workshops for both pre- and in-service teachers. Riding pillion on backroads with her husband Michael Kelley in the tropics and wherever else there are good roadside coffee shops is one of her favorite things to do. She’s also quite fond of the water and made her husband promise they could live on a houseboat someday.