During collaborative storytelling, I’ve often told students that their job is to suggest and/or guess details in the story. That is, sometimes I know the story and they need to guess, and other times they get to influence it. StoryGuessing is a more structured version of this process.

StoryGuessing eliminates any voting, which means you can tell a short story quick, and I mean real quick, like in the first 5 minutes of class (e.g. Darvin is sad because he doesn’t have coffee. Darvin leaves class and gets coffee from Principal HD. Darvin is happy). When you get a particular detail—perhaps from something a student says as they enter the room, like what they want, or how they’re feeling (e.g. “Darvin is sad, but why?”)—ask students to guess on a piece of paper (Do Now/Weekly Sheet, notebook, etc.). Then, tell them what the detail is (e.g. “Darvin is sad because he doesn’t have coffee.“), ask who guessed correctly, then continue the story.

Here’s the rub…

Fish for a detail, asking a student or two what they guessed, and go with that (e.g. “yep, you got it!”). N.B. Be sure to limit the fishing to just once or twice! The point is for students to guess your story. If you keep asking students what their guesses were for each detail, that starts to become classic Storyasking, and will take much, much longer, and it will become obvious that you have absolutely no story in mind. StoryGuessing, then, could be one way to prepare students for Storyasking.

All you need is a simple 3-sentence script in mind, and go from there. End by typing story in a projected Google Doc as students copy (i.e. Write & Discuss). Here was my first script:

• Mr P is sad because he has a bad tooth.
• Mr P goes to Mr E (the Bio teacher), not the dentist.
• Mr P doesn’t go to the dentist because he has bad insurance.
  (This was the one detail I fished for that a student provided.)
• Mr E removes the tooth, but it’s the wrong tooth.

StoryGuessing. It’s just one more collaborative storytelling option. Try it!