#25wordstory Challenge

I happened across the Twitter 25 Word Story writing experiment and challenge a few days ago and thought this would be a great idea to share with my 6th grade gifted class. The goal is to tell a story in exactly 25 words. To introduce them to the concept, I shared Kevin Hodgson’s Prezi titled “Sixty 25-Word Stories”. I really didn’t do much more than that and hoped that some of them would take interest.

On our class wiki, a created a new page – 25wordstory. Wow! What I wasn’t expecting was that within the last 30-minutes of my 90-minute class period, students had posted more than 600 entries of their own. They went absolutely wild with the concept! Some were insightful, others funny.

With such huge interest from just one class, I decided to hold a contest for the best 25 word story entries. The kids suggested we set up categories. Their ideas exploded, and the contest was getting really huge, fast! I convinced them to agree on just two categories: humorous and contemplative and one entry per student in each category.

Then I posted an open invitation to the contest and set up a deadline. After our grammar test today, I gave them time to work on submissions and post. I’m pretty sure at this point every student has entered at least one story. I’m planning to introduce this to my first and second period classes on Monday. I can’t wait to see if they share the same enthusiasm as my last period did.

Here are some sample entries I thought you would enjoy!