Assessing Reading Comprehension Through Story Retelling

Retelling assessment guidelines. When using retelling as an assessment tool (as opposed to a teaching tool), it is important that the child start with an unprompted retelling. Based on Morrow’s work, Cooper (1993) suggests the following guidelines:

• Select similar texts. When comparing a child’s retellings over time, use the same type of text each time. Compare narratives with narratives and nonfiction texts with other nonfiction texts.
• Prepare a guide sheet. When using narratives, identify the setting, characters, events, and resolution. For informational texts, identify the topic, purpose, and main idea. Use this information sheet as a guide or checklist as you listen to the child’s retellings.
• Ask the child to retell the text. After the child finishes an unprompted retelling, you may want to prompt him with more specific questions about parts of the text he did not include. For example, if the child did not include when the story took place, ask, You told me where the story takes place; what can you tell me about when it takes place?
• Summarize and evaluate the retelling. Using your guide sheet, discuss and review the retelling with the child to help him understand what can be improved and how. This process also helps you develop instructional goals for future sessions.

Levels of retellings. As children become more proficient readers, their retellings become more comprehensive. Direct instruction and practice increase students’ abilities to retell texts. Children can practice retelling with classmates or by recording and listening to their own reconstructions. As children improve, they tend to use more book and story language, which increases oral language and vocabulary (Morrow, 1989). Consider the following levels of retelling (Honig, Diamond, & Gutlohn, 2000):

1. Simple descriptive retellings:
• Have simple beginning, middle, and end
• May describe a setting
• Present an initiating event and the outcome of a problem
2. More complex retellings:
• Present concrete events and facts in sequence
• Supply missing information through appropriate inferences
• Include some explanation of the causes of events
3. Most complete retellings:
• Present a sequence of actions and events
• Provide explanations for the motivations behind characters’ actions
• Elaborate using details from the story or details enhanced by prior knowledge
• Comment on or evaluate the text

After using retelling as a teaching tool for a number of sessions, Terrence decides to use it as an informal assessment of Marisa’s comprehension.

Terrence: OK, the story I’m going to read to you is called The Mouse and the Bull.

Marisa: I thought it was The Mouse and the Lion.

Terrence: There is one called The Mouse and the Lion. Do you remember what happens in that story?

Marisa: Well, there’s a little mouse and he gets caught … [Marisa proceeds to tell the story].

Terrence allows some time for Marisa to activate previous experience by recalling a similar sounding story, The Mouse and the Lion. This way, he validates the connection between the two stories and gives the child an opportunity to warm up with something familiar.

Terrence: I’ve heard of that story, too. Well, this story is a little different as you’ll see. After I finish reading this story, I’m going to ask you to tell it back to me as well as you can. Pretend I’m someone who doesn’t know the story at all. OK, now I’m going to read The Mouse and the Bull.

Terrence gives specific directions and repeats the title to make sure that Marisa is focusing on the current story.

One day a mouse was playing in a farmer’s field when he saw a large, black bull dozing nearby. Being a bit of a rascal, the mouse crept close to the huge animal and bit its tail. The bull roared and snorted and chased the little mouse around the farmyard. However, the tiny creature was too quick for the bull and hid in a hole in the wall. The bull charged at the wall time after time but nothing would move the little mouse safely hidden in the hole. Eventually, the bull was so exhausted that he sank to his knees, unable to go on any more. The end.³

Marisa: Hey, that was really short.

Terrence: It is a short story.

Marisa: OK. Now I’m going to tell it to you. There was a mouse and he was playing in the farmyard … I think. And there’s a bull snoozing. And he was being a little bit of a rascal, and he bit the bull’s tail. But, he was a little too fast for the bull and also, um, and, um, the mouse ran into a wall … into a hole in the wall. The bull charged and hit the wall a lot trying to get to the mouse, but he couldn’t. And eventually he stopped … That’s it.

Terrence: You remembered a lot of the details. You were also able to add more in the middle, like when you said the mouse ran into the wall and then changed it to be more descriptive by saying a hole in the wall. That shows you’re really trying to visualize what’s happening. Tell me more about why the bull stopped.

Marisa: Yup, because he was too tired to keep on.

Terrence: Was the hole that the mouse hid in big or small?

Terrence gives Marisa a choice (big or small) to provide a structure from which to elaborate — which she does.

Marisa: Small. The bull couldn’t fit in it—only if he could shrink.

Terrence: Was any character particularly smart in this story?

Marisa: Well, the mouse wasn’t smart because he bit the bull. He was a rascal. But then he was smart because he hid in a hole.

Terrence: Why was hiding in the hole so smart?

Marisa: Because the bull was too big to fit and the mouse was, um … safe.

Assessing Reading Comprehension Through Story Retelling (cont.)