OWATs - or One Word at a Time stories - are the brainchild of Bob Patrick. Essentially, their purpose is to allow students to be creative and write their own stories within the confines of vocabulary that you want them to use. One vocab word is passed out to each group, and they have to write a sentence with that word. Bob then has them switch cards with another finished group so they can write their next sentence, continuing the story.
I found that if I waited for enough groups to be done for that, the chances that a group would be sitting around doing nothing - because either (a) no other group was done soon enough or (b) the group that was done had a word the other group had already gotten - was much higher.
