"Retelling as Written Response" Ideas

[This post is based on a question Lisa posed in the June 25th comment box.]

Dear Lisa,

I think you’re “right on” when you have your ELL first graders talk about the book you’ve read aloud before asking them to respond in writing. The types of guided responses you've asked them to make and the prompts you've provide seem varied and developmentally appropriate. And I totally get how this is so much more difficult when they attempt them on their own. This is always the case and, as you well know, their skill develops over time. So we need to be patient.

Let’s focus for a moment on the “retelling” part of your question. You’ve expressed concern that asking kids to retell stories would be tedious and boring. It may be, but the extend to which it actually is depends on how often we ask them to retell and the types of retelling we engage them in. Two things need to come into play: First, we need to balance written responses with oral responses such as readers theater, book talks, etc. and visual representations such as making pictures, character maps, etc. Second, we need to expand the scaffolds we provide for students as they retell. 

You mention Beginning-Middle-End (B-M-E) as one scaffold. In The Next Step in Guided Reading, Jan Richardson offers two others that work with early readers such as yours. They are Somebody-Wanted-But-So (S-W-B-S) and the Five-Finger Retell.

Here’s how Richardson describes S-W-B-S:

“The students write a one-sentence summary using the S-W-B-S scaffold. At first you will need to help students write this response, but eventually you should be able to say, Write a ‘Somebody-Wanted-But-So’ for this story.

Somebody: Who is the story about?

Wanted: What did this character want?

But: But what happened?

So: How did it end? What happened next?

The response should be written in a complete sentence. As students write independently, you should circulate among the group and scaffold students who need your help.”

In addition Richardson discusses the Five-Finger Retell where each finger represents one aspect of story grammar.

Thumb: The characters are…

1^st finger: The setting is…

Tall finger: The problem is…

Ring finger: The events are… (What happened first? Next? Then?)

Little finger: At the end…

Since your students are young and ELL, this is a scaffold you would introduce and initially use in whole-class settings. However as the students get the hang of it you might ask them to write about “one finger” with enough detail (and perhaps a picture) to show they understand how it works with the story as a whole. And of course, they will need multiple demonstrations of what you mean.

I close with this reminder. While responses to text—written and otherwise—are important and should be something kids do during their independent reading time of day, we need to remember that providing voluminous opportunities for them to read just-right books is still our number one priority. Kids can’t improve their reading if they don’t read.