From the Workshop
If you were in a Quest-Based Learning session, this is your follow-up page. If someone told you about it and you weren’t there, everything here works without having attended — you’ll just be reading the round instead of remembering it.
If you only do one thing: go to the Quickstart and run it. Everything else on this page is optional depth.
What Happened in the Room
You read a short story, silently, the way a student would.
Then everyone inhabited the same character at the same threshold moment — the point where that character could genuinely have gone either way. You took one of three lenses; some people picked, some rolled a die for it. The die only chooses the way in. Then you wrote a few sentences in character, in that character’s voice, at that moment.
Then we read several aloud — at least one from each lens — and asked:
Which reading does the text support, and what’s your evidence?
That harvest is the analysis. Everyone wrote at once, nobody waited for a turn, and there was nothing to win. The writing is the play.
The three claims from the session, in order:
- The card is the stick. A child with a stick is a knight. A student with a character card is inside the text. The prop does the work of imagination that instruction alone can’t assign.
- Same moment, three readings. Everyone writes as the same character at the same threshold, each through a different lens. The disagreement that produces is what the discussion is made of — and every student arrives holding a reading to defend, because each of them wrote one.
- The minimum is one card, one scene, one question. Everything else is elaboration.
Session Materials
The Character Frame Card prints two to a page — half-sheets, one cut. The Solo Framework SRD — the System Reference Document — is the full Narrative Crossroads system. The minimum version you ran in the room is now the Quickstart page, which prints on its own.
The toolkit function menu and the accessibility handout stayed in the room. Ask for them at geoffrey@geoffreysperl.com and I’ll send them.
Running It Yourself
The stories used in the session are still in copyright, so the texts themselves aren’t hosted here — you’ll need your own classroom copies. The structure is the same whichever text you use:
- Read it first. Silently, in the room. The round depends on everyone holding the same scene.
- Name the moment. One threshold, framed out loud, for everyone at once. Pick one where a reasonable reader could argue the character should have done otherwise.
- Hand out the lenses. Pick or roll. What you want is all three live somewhere in the room; a die gets you there fastest.
- Write, then harvest. A few sentences each, then several read aloud — at least one per lens — and then the evidence question.
It scales down as well as up. One participant works; so does a staff meeting. Nobody is performing, so a small room costs you nothing.
Ask for the facilitator documents at geoffrey@geoffreysperl.com and tell me what you’re teaching — I’ll send the version that fits.
The Eight Procedures
The toolkit segment’s premise: strip the setting off a game and keep the procedure underneath. You don’t adopt a whole game — you take the procedure that does a classroom job and drop it into a text you already teach.
| Procedure | The classroom job it does |
|---|---|
| Session zero | Establishing norms students actually own |
| Community and place | Building shared context before content |
| “What do you do?” | Converting comprehension into commitment |
| Writing in role | Answers that arrive as the character, not about the character |
| A choice that costs something | Making stakes real enough to reason about |
| Safety and calibration | Giving students a way out that isn’t a confession |
| Structure that survives absence | Running a unit when a third of the room is gone |
| Students inventing the rules | Handing over authorship |
The full menu — with a specific game behind each procedure — isn’t posted here. Ask at geoffrey@geoffreysperl.com and I’ll send it.
Bringing This to Your Building
I run Quest-Based Learning as a two-and-a-half hour in-person session for secondary staff. It includes a played round, a structured harvest, the toolkit segment, and print materials for everyone in the room. It’s built for mixed departments, not just ELA.
If your district is interested: geoffrey@geoffreysperl.com
Tell Me How It Went
I collect what actually happens in other people’s classrooms. If you run a crossroads — the minimum version or the full one — I’d like to hear what the text was, what you asked, and what your students did with it. Successes and failures both.