Assessing Reading Comprehension Through Story Retelling (cont.)

What can the tutor learn from this retelling?

The child was able to retell the story in sequence, with a beginning, middle, and end. She used the word snoozing instead of dozing, indicating a good understanding of the material and a growing vocabulary. She also used a word from the text, rascal, in the retelling and in her answers to the tutor’s questions. It is clear from the discussion that she inferred what happened between the bull and the mouse (the mouse ran into a hole that was too small for the bull to follow) and made assumptions based on the character’s actions and her perception of them (i.e., the mouse was smart). Between the first retelling exercise and this one, her ability to elaborate and make inferences about the story has improved. Though it is clear that Marisa is getting better at retelling (she has moved from a simple description to a more complex retelling), the retelling itself was not as complete as it could be; she omitted a number of details and explained others only partially.

How can the tutor help?

For subsequent sessions, the tutor can provide more structure (e.g., the five-finger strategy) to help the child organize the information absorbed, and encourage further retelling through the use of concrete materials, such as a felt board or puppets. The child’s answers to the tutor’s prompts indicate the ability to infer information from the text. The next step is to demonstrate that her response to the text is as important to a retelling as recounting the facts of the story.

Because retelling improves children’s reading comprehension skills in a multitude of ways, tutors benefit from knowing how to effectively support children in developing this skill. Keep these tips in mind as you begin to engage students in retelling activities:

• Model retelling
• Use predictable texts and/or familiar stories, such as fairy tales or folk tales
• Retell a portion of a familiar text and ask the child to finish the retelling
• Ask the child to identify the most important part of the text
• Have the child work with a partner to practice retelling
  (Gambrell and Dromsky, 2000)

For informational and nonfiction texts, prompt the child to tell about:

• The topic
• The main idea
• The ideas supporting the main idea

Regardless of the specific activities you choose from the suggestions in this article, retelling will enhance and deepen students’ reading comprehension.

End Notes, & References