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AI Collaborative Stories
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A common activity that teachers like to use is the collaborative story in which students take it in turns to add a sentence to a story. But what if the students worked with AI to create a story instead?
- Focus: Writing
- Level: Pre-Intermediate+
- Age: Teen/Adult
- Target Language: Narrative tenses, topic-specific vocabulary
- Time: 10-15 minutes
- Preparation: Very little
Procedure:
Pre: Before attempting such an exercise in lessons, you will want to make sure students have access to a suitable AI. You can do this by bringing the subject up before the lesson in which you want to use it.
In the lesson you are planning to use AI, you will need to set up the context for them creating the story, and this will likely also involve introducing language they can use.
1: Tell students that they will use AI to co-create a story. Tell them what you want to happen and have them plan what they will tell the AI to do. Assist students to come up with instructions that will result in the required result.
2: Have students open the AI and type in their prompt. Check that the AI is behaving as expected for the students.
3: If their instructions have worked, give the students about 10 minutes to construct their story.
4: Have students share their story with the class.
5: Reflect on the process and encourage students to go back through the story. Have them ask the AI to clarify language points.
Note: ChatGPT is programmed to lead students away from certain topics. Some students may find its attempts to push stories in a wholesome direction to be somewhat cringey, while other students will take up the challenge to push the AI in directions it doesn’t want to go.
Variations:
Instead of having the AI write a sentence at a time, the AI can be instructed to add one word at a time.
Or another alternative is to have the AI improve each sentence that the students enter into the AI.
Example Instructions:
Let’s write a story together about a student from Spain who travels to the UK for an English summer school. You write a sentence, then I will write a sentence.
How about we create a story where I say one word then you say one word?
I will write a sentence of a story and then you make it sound better.
