The Life of Words

A card game for storytelling: some experiences

Abstract

This paper presents and analyses two teacher-training workshops held during the 15th National Meeting of the Portuguese Association of Portuguese Teachers (APP), centred on the card game A Vida das Palavras, designed for collaborative storytelling. The workshops, one online and one face-to-face, engaged teachers in a playful, creative and reflective process, in which they assumed the role of learners and collaboratively con-structed narratives.
Aligned with the Profile of Students at the End of Compulsory Schooling (PASEO) and the Essential Learnings for Portuguese (AEP), the game was explored as a pedagogical tool that integrates vocabulary, gram-mar, orality and text in meaningful language-use contexts. The theoretical framework draws on socio-interac-tionist perspectives, emphasising discursive negotiation, mediation and collaborative work.
The workshop evaluation, based on a questionnaire, highlights participants’ recognition of the game’s didactic potential for developing narrative competence, creativity and textuality, as well as its transferability to classroom practice.