Retells in Kindergarten

The use of conversation is so important in students' writing development. Younger students especially benefit from talking about stories and ideas before actually writing them down. And because the physical act of writing is particularly demanding for these students, focused discussions can be considering a form of pre-writing.

We do a lot of retells in first grade as a way to teach sequencing (beginning, middle, end), plot development, and other elements of stories. Recently I found this post describing work in a kindergarten classroom around a retell. The book they read is called The Wolf's Chicken Stew by Keiko Kasza. My favorite part about this lesson is the use of felt characters to orally retell the story. Students can do the oral retell as part of their "choices" during the literacy block. What a wonderful idea! If you click here, you can see a video of one retelling using the felt materials.

As you can see, the teachers took the students through multiple readings and oral retells of the text on to focused mini-lessons and eventually writing down their own retells. The writing samples given show remarkable work for a kindergartener!

Note: If you wish to re-create this series of lessons in your classroom, keep in mind that these kindergarten teachers used their students' interest in this story to prompt the writing and retelling activities. You may have a more appropriate picture book in your classroom that your students gravitate to that would be more suited to these activities!