Rory's Story Cubes – 003

Rory’s Story Cubes: a storytelling game!

Episode Overview

In this episode of “Board Gaming with English” Dustin and Rich introduce a game called “Rory’s Story Cubes.” This is a story-telling game with dice. You roll dice and have to tell a story based on the pictures presented on the dice. The combinations and uses for this game with English language learning are nearly endless. It is a great game for practicing English conversation and learning to tell stories and organize your ideas. Let us know what you think of the game in the comments below!
Thank you to Rory’s Story Cubes, the Asmodee Group, and Hub Games Ltd for their collaboration to bring Rory’s Story Cubes to homes and classrooms!
Thank you to Joshua Empyre for the “Victory Music” in our “Keywords” segment. Thank you also to Zapsplat for the sound effects in this episode. Sound effects from Zapsplat can be obtained at: www.zapsplat.com

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Sound Cloud

• Where to play Rory’s Story Cubes?

• Listener Objective (Learner + Lecture)

• Listener Objective (Teacher + Resources)

• Rules

• Transcript

Where Can you Play Rory’s Story Cubes?

You can purchase “Rory’s Story Cubes” by Asmodee Games through our Amazon affiliate link or…

Purchasing through, our affiliate link not only supports the board game developers but provides us with a small compensation to keep bringing you more board games to help with improving your English.

You can play a classroom version with your own images.

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Listener Objective (Learner + Lecture)

If you are a student studying English, after listening to this episode you will be able to…

• …use basic past tense grammar structures to tell a story.

• …learn different vocabulary based on the images on the dice.

Check out our PDF to help you with the past tense.

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Listener Objective (Teacher + Resources)

If you are a teacher teaching English, after listening to this episode you will be able to…

• …teach and use a fun, storytelling game to supplement a key learning objective.

• …help your students develop the language skills and confidence for speaking or storytelling.

• …download and learn to use the resources provided below.

This is a great game to institute in your classroom with various activities and different games. Take a look at the different uses for the game in your lessons below. You can also check out some different ways to implement the game in your classroom. Don’t forget to check out the learner PDF to help your students.

Writing: Storytelling

Give students the opportunity to roll nine dice and start one student with writing a story based on the 9 dice. You can have the students start the story, but not finish it. The first student will write the beginning of the story and pass their story onto the next student. Then the next student will continue the story and so on. This helps with…

Speaking: Storytelling

Similar to the writing activity. Students can start a story and then continue it. However, when it comes to speaking students usually require more support and scaffolding. You can give students a few minutes to brainstorm a story, write it down, and then tell it in front of the class. This activity really helps students master brainstorming techniques, organizational skills, and speaking confidence.

Superhero Story

Have a student roll three dice. They must create a superhero based on these three dice. Then have the student roll all nine dice. Now, they must take the superhero on an adventure based on these three dice.

Random Image Generator

This is a website (http://writingexercises.co.uk/random-image-generator.php) that will give you a random image. You can use the resource similarly to Rory’s Story Cubes. Give students a random image and ask them to create a story based on this image.

Or you can simply print off several different pictures and have students randomly choose from the printed pictures.

Vocabulary Review

If you have a set of vocabulary words you are working with, you can use these in a similar fashion as well. Have students randomly select the words or images you are covering and tell a story based on these words. Students will review the vocabulary to be able to learn how to use and apply the vocabulary to their writing or speaking.

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Rules

Rory’s Story Cubes is a fairly simple game. You roll the dice and tell a story based on what you roll. Check out the teacher’s listener objective for different variations on the game. Let us know in the comments if you can think of other fun and clever ways to plays the game.

Download the full transcript for this episode here.