Retellings Strategy (Beers)

I absolutely love the Retellings Strategy that Beers explains in Chapter 8. This after-reading strategy is extremely important, since it teaches students how to properly summarize a text. Beers suggest we use the retelling strategy to “move students past the “stuff happens” response” (P152). She then explains that a retelling is an “oral summary of a text based on a set of story elements, such as setting, main characters, and conflicts.” (152).

Although being able to summarize a text is considered to be a very basic skill, it is also extremely important since if students can’t summarize a story, they won’t be able to perform other higher order thinking skills (such as telling  the story from a different perspective, or making connections between the text and their lives).Through the retelling, students summarize all the important aspects of a text, which will then allow you to move on to more challenging activities.

 A retelling is also an excellent way to assess students’ understanding of concepts that you have taught. For instance, if you model how to identify conflict, you would want them to be able to identify conflict on their own, and through a retelling, you can make sure that students know how to do that. I always struggled with getting students to provide more details about the texts we were reading when summarizing, and I can now use this strategy to help teach them how to write summaries. 


Beers, K. (2003). When Kids Can't Read What Teachers Can Do. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann