Saturday, February 20, 2016

What's Really Important?

Do your students struggle with story retell? I mean meaningful sequential retell. This year my little first grade buddies have been struggling with retell. Yes, they can retell a story... but not in a very meaningful way. I want them to tell the most important details from the text in their retell. So, to help my firsties improve their retell skills, we have been learning about important vs interesting. During week one of the lesson, I chose Where the Wild Things Are. They absolutely love the story! However, I read the entire story the first day, and separate readings of the Beginning, Middle, and End over the following days, and I found reading the entire book on day 1 really confused some of my students BME writing. They had a hard time not referring to just the specific BME.
So this pass week I read Anansi and the Magic Stick... such a cute and funny
story, that Anansi is always being tricky. My students absolutely loved the
story! I read the Beginning, Middle, and End
on separate days, after each reading my little friends begged for more! After each part my students responded to the text by writing down something interesting and something important. This helped them out so much, at the end of the week they were able to compose very meaningful story retells.... I am super proud...:). I will be continuing this lesson next week with another text. I also made some graphic organizers to support the text, and to guide students thinking during the study of Anansi and the Magic Stick...Feel free to check them out on my TPT.  I highly suggest teaching important vs interesting to get students to retell in more meaningful ways... Have a super Weekend!!!!