This week we started reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears - a great story to begin our retells with! After reading our story once or twice, we got started with our oral retells. I was lucky enough to have some adorable story spoons made up for me over the holidays, which arrived just in time to teach this text! These were made by Jenna Bee via her Facebook page 'Just Craftin' Around - Story Spoons'. They worked so well and my kids were in awe of them, and just so excited to use them!
For our oral retells, I selected four children to hold a spoon each and act out the story using some setting cards in a pocket chart, which I made, printed and laminated. They were so engaged in this part of the day that I just had to let them make their own, and you would not believe how excited they were!
On Wednesday, while we were acting out our retells, I scribed our story onto the whiteboard and we re read it as a class.
Next day we pulled out a sentence from our retell and worked in pairs to pull it apart. Each pair had the sentence written on a large cardboard strip, coloured dot stickers, and a highlighter. Their first job was to place a sticky dot under each word to make anchor point for tracking their reading. After this, we read, re read and read again the sentence, taking turns while I circulate the room, listening to a couple each time. While reading we stop and look at the word which make up the sentence. For example, in our sentence 'First she ate Baby Bear's porridge.' we spoke about time words telling us when an event happened, pronouns which can be used in place of a name, actions, and details. As we looked at each word or group of words we highlighted in on the sentence strip.
Once we had finished our highlighting, I zipped around the room and cut apart the strips into those words/word groups and shuffled the pieces. The kiddies practised mixing up the words then reassembling the sentence in the correct order.
On Tuesday I gave the kiddies their own set of pictures to colour and use for their own story puppets. I took these home and laminated them for durability, and brought them back for the kids to cut and add pop sticks to over the next few days. On Friday I printed and laminated some mini books for them colour in and use for their retells (again, you should have seen their faces when I showed them what they were doing! I got a few cuddles when they found out).
Once the booklets were done, I handed out the kiddies bags with their story puppets, they found their own spot in the room, and they started their retells! This time, I was more excited than they were to see them so happily engaging in literacy!
At the very end of our week, we had a go at starting to write our own retells. The kids worked in ability groups with a helper and each group worked at their own level. They used their retell aids to help remember the events in the story. Below are a couple pictures of 2 of my groups work. On the left is a picture of a cloze activity I did with my little ones who are still working on letters, and on the right is the next level up. This group brainstormed their sentence and then worked with their helper to write their sentences.
This week has been full of wonderful work by my little ones, who were happily engaging with literacy and I have been so happy to see it! I would love to share this with you to try with your own kiddies so if you click on the link below, you will find your very own copy of the Goldilocks and the Three Bears retell aids, both colour and black and white versions to use with your class!
I hope you get some use out of this little FREEBIE :)
Until next time my friends,
