Unit 1 · Finding a true story.

By the end Tell the difference between a story and a topic, and name one moment from their own life that has a turn in it.

You need Whiteboard. Nothing else.

1. 5 min — Two examples. Tell the class two things about yourself. One is a topic: "I like fishing." One is a story: "The first time I went fishing with my grandfather, I fell in the water and he did not stop laughing for a year." Ask which one they want to hear more about. They always pick the second.
2. 10 min — Name the difference. Draw two columns on the board: TOPIC and STORY. Students call out which side each of your sentences belongs on. Elicit the rule in their own words: a story has a moment when something changed.
3. 10 min — Hunt for the turn. In pairs, students tell each other about something that happened to them last year. The partner's only job is to listen and say where the turn was. Not the grammar. The turn.
4. 5 min — One sentence. Every student writes one sentence beginning "The day that…". Collect them. These are the seeds of the five-minute story they will tell on stage.

To finish Homework: ask one person at home what the most surprising day of their life was. Bring back one sentence.

By the end Describe a remembered moment using at least three of the five senses.

You need Five slips of paper per student, or five lines in a notebook.

1. 5 min — Close your eyes. Ask the class to picture the kitchen of the house they grew up in. Give them silence for a full minute. Silence is the lesson.
2. 10 min — Five lines. On five separate lines they write: what I saw, what I heard, what I smelled, what I tasted, what I touched. Single words are fine. Thai is fine at this stage.
3. 7 min — Trade. Pairs swap papers and read each other's five lines aloud. The listener says which line made the room appear most clearly.
4. 3 min — The rule. Smell and sound do more work than sight, because everyone describes sight and nobody describes smell. Write that on the board.

To finish Homework: one smell from childhood, described in one English sentence.

By the end Produce a map of their own life with at least eight events marked on it, and choose three worth telling.

You need One large sheet of paper per student. Colored pens if you have them.

1. 5 min — Show yours. Draw your own life as a road across the board, with bumps. Mark five events. Be honest about one of them — a failure, a move, a loss. The class will match your level of honesty and no higher.
2. 20 min — They draw. Each student draws their own road and marks at least eight events. Ages, places, people. Words in Thai are fine.
3. 10 min — Circle three. They circle the three they would be willing to tell a room full of strangers. Willing is the test, not important.
4. 5 min — Keep it. These maps get used again in Lessons 6 and 9. Collect them, or have each student keep their own somewhere safe.

To finish No homework. This one is heavy enough.

By the end Tell a two-minute spoken story generated entirely from one physical object.

You need Every student brings one object from home. Have spares — a coin, a key, a photograph.

1. 5 min — The object speaks. Hold up something of yours and tell its story in ninety seconds. Time yourself in front of them so they see it is short.
2. 10 min — Three questions. Each student answers, in writing: Where did it come from? Who else has held it? What would be lost if it broke?
3. 12 min — Round the room. In groups of four, each student tells their object's story. Two minutes each, no notes.
4. 3 min — Notice. Ask who found that the object gave them more than they expected. Most hands go up. That is the lesson: concrete things carry stories; abstract ideas do not.

To finish Homework: find a second object. Bring it next week.

By the end Conduct a recorded interview with an older family member and extract one story from it.

You need A phone with a voice recorder. Any phone.

1. Before the lesson — set it up. Give students five questions in Thai and English: What was the hardest year of your life? What did you own that you loved? Who helped you when nobody had to? What did you want to be? What do you wish someone had told you?
2. Homework — the interview. Students record one family member answering. Twenty minutes is plenty. They do not translate or transcribe. They only listen again afterward.
3. 10 min in class — one moment each. Each student reports one moment from the interview in two or three English sentences.
4. 10 min — whose story is it? Discuss: you may tell a family member's story on stage, but you must say whose it is, and you must have asked them. Make that rule explicit now.

To finish Keep the recording. Do not delete it. In ten years it will matter more than the prize.

By the end Identify the single moment in their story where something changed, and mark it.

You need Their story map from Lesson 3.

1. 8 min — Before and after. On the board write: BEFORE — TURN — AFTER. Tell a very short story of your own and have the class call out where the turn was.
2. 12 min — Find yours. Students take one circled event from their map and write three lines: what I believed before, what happened, what I believed after.
3. 10 min — Test it. In pairs, read only the before line and the after line aloud, skipping the middle. If the partner can feel that something big is missing, the turn is real. If not, the event is a topic and they should try another.
4. 5 min — Name it. Each student writes their turn in one sentence and keeps it. This sentence is the spine of the five minutes.

To finish Homework: rewrite the turn sentence three different ways.

By the end Convert three telling sentences into showing sentences using concrete detail.

You need Whiteboard.

1. 5 min — Two versions. Write on the board: "My mother was tired." Then: "My mother fell asleep sitting up, still holding the rice scoop." Ask which one they can see.
2. 10 min — The swap drill. Give five telling sentences: He was poor. She was angry. The village was quiet. I was afraid. The teacher was kind. Students rewrite each with a thing you could photograph.
3. 15 min — Their own. Students take their own story and underline every sentence that tells rather than shows. Rewrite three of them.
4. 10 min — Read two aloud. Volunteers read the before and after. The class says which one puts them in the room.

To finish Homework: describe one person at home without using a single adjective.

By the end Recognize when a story has drifted into explanation, and cut the explanation.

You need A paragraph you have written that drifts — one you can read aloud, or copy onto the board.

1. 8 min — Hear the drift. Read a paragraph aloud that starts as a story and turns into a lecture about why rice farming is difficult. Ask them where they stopped being interested. They will all point to the same sentence.
2. 10 min — The rule. Explanation answers "why is this true in general". Story answers "what happened to me". A competition story can afford about one sentence of explanation and no more.
3. 10 min — Audit. Students read their own draft and bracket every sentence that explains rather than narrates.
4. 2 min — Cut. They delete all but one.

To finish Homework: write the one sentence of explanation you are allowed to keep.

By the end Commit to one story for the competition and defend the choice.

You need Their three circled events from Lesson 3.

1. 5 min — Three tests. Write on the board: Can I tell it in five minutes? Do I still feel something when I think about it? Will I still be willing to have told it next year?
2. 10 min — Score them. Students score each of their three candidates against the three tests.
3. 8 min — Say it out loud. Each student stands and says one sentence: "I am going to tell the story of the day…". Standing matters. Sitting is a draft; standing is a decision.
4. 2 min — Write it down. They write the sentence at the top of a fresh page. Everything from here on serves that sentence.

To finish No homework. Let the decision settle.

By the end Produce a complete first draft of the story in Thai or Isan, start to finish.

You need Paper. Forty-five uninterrupted minutes.

1. 5 min — Permission. Tell them plainly: write this draft in the language you dream in. Isan is fine. Nobody will mark the grammar. The English comes later and it comes easier when the story is already whole.
2. 35 min — Write. Silence. No dictionaries, no phones, no questions. If they stop, they sit with it. A stuck five minutes is part of writing.
3. 5 min — Count. Students count their words and write the number at the top. That number is the honest measure of how much story they have. Anything over 400 is plenty for five minutes.

To finish Homework: read the draft aloud to one person at home and mark where they laughed or went quiet.