Branching Stories for Early Years with Powerpoint

Leon Cych
All Souls Primary School, London

An adventure slideshow created in Powerpoint (Microsoft) can be one very simple starting point to model a branching story. This sort of activity can also be an excellent way to develop and hone children's thinking and social skills. It makes them proactive and gets them right into talking about decisions and decision-making from the start. In addition it models scenarios in a simple but effective way. It can be used in a number of different open-ended ways. For example it could be used to develop thinking and reflection in Circle time or as a way to develop collaborative discussion and thinking with young children in specific curriculum contexts or with familiar stories. As always with early years children it shouldn't be used out of context.

Adventure or "decision making" branching stories help develop "soft" and interpersonal social skills. Some children in your class may not be used to discussions where this kind of modelling goes on - this is the ideal opportunity to build a structure that enables you to build in opportunities to develop such talking and thinking. Very young children are very imaginative when it comes to offering suggestions for a set, setting, characters and possible choices. Usually, but not always, their ideas can be wildly speculative and fantastic - encourage as much of this as possible. Nothing is "off-limits" in this respect for these activities.

Such activities do, however, need a structure. So what is the choice going to be? Use a "trigger" question or familiar situation to elicit a response. Model this for the children - Do you think…? What if this were to happen…? How can you get out of this situation…? Get the children up to draw elements of what is going to happen. Break a traditional tale down into these key "break points" so there is some familiarity. Take them from the known to the unknown - get them to "risk" an opinion or a decision.

Differentiate this activity by questioning - ask more sophisticated questions of children who need this level of challenge. Model the situation for less able children - use props and high levels of interactivity at all times. Wherever possible get children up to participate and offer suggestions as a model for others. Put them in role and face them with a decision they have to resolve. Open this out to the whole class - get alternatives - garner opinion generally - Do you think she should…?; Yes, but what if….? Mediate and model at all times in a positive atmosphere. All kinds of props can help:

In fact anything that can help to focus their attention on the decision making process!

With younger children or age groups it is important to mediate but not to dominate play and inventiveness. It may be helpful to give out a decision sheet and get the children to map out the story using paper before showing them what it looks like on screen

Where do you take it from there?

The most obvious, I suppose, is drama and role play. You could get children to think about what happens next in a set situation that you provide. Or, even better, get them to provide the scenario. This is all about them stopping and thinking about what will happen next; negotiating and moving forward to a resolution. Some questions may help decide how to develop the ideas further.

Use the Powerpoint show as a trigger to ask - what happens next? What would you like to happen next? Careful choice of questions should elicit interesting responses.The CD accompanying this focus pack contains two Powerpoint files. One takes you through the steps to create a branching story, the other is an example of one created in discussion with a group of children.

	Adventure Navigation - A guide to setting up the powerpoint template (Powerpoint presentation) To leave Adventure Navigation, just close the browser window
	Adventure - An example of an outcome (Powerpoint presentation) To leave Adventure, just close the browser window If the links in these presentations do not seem to work and you have Powerpoint on your computer, try launching the original presentation from the CD
	If you do not have Powerpoint or are using older version of the software, use these web-enabled versions; Adventure Navigation, Adventure

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