Retelling a FABULOUS story!

Retelling a story is a very effective way to improve your students reading comprehension.  To scaffold their success in this skill, I like to read the crap out of a book choose one book for each theme and read the book aloud as many times as I can in a variety of ways.  

For our Thanksgiving Theme we read the story, I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie.  There are so many great ways to retell a story!  This month I decided to make a big story to hang in the classroom.  

• First....I grouped the students in pairs and they made visual objects to go with each of the items the old lady swallowed.  
• Second....as a whole group we sounded out each of the words (in kid writing) to display.  I wrote the correct way underneath the "kid writing" word. 
• Third...we discussed what the old lady ate first, second, third, fourth, etc. 

Here is a picture of our masterpiece.  Many times while the students are waiting in line I can hear them retelling the story to themselves.  Yippie....all the hard work was worth it!  
FYI...I like to save the items the students made to use next year if we do not have time to make them.  The kiddos get a kick at seeing their friends work from first grade in our classroom!    

My aide made the old lady...isn't she cute!?!  She looked at a picture from....hmmm....somewhere on the web and I cannot find the resource again.  I should have "Pinned" it!  If it looks like your old lady...please let me know!

 Check out this "RETELLING"" poster from First Grade W.O.W.  I cannot wait to make this for my classroom! 

Click {right here} to go to her post about retelling stories.  AMAZING ideas!

Thanks for reading!  

Amber