The Stuff That Happens - Using Retellings

On page 152 of When Kids Can't Read, Kylene Beers introduces the "Retellings" technique, an "oral summary of a text based on a set of story elements, such as setting, main characters, and conflicts" (Beers 152).  The strategy is deceptively simple: can a given reader recount clearly and accurately what happened in a recently-completed text?  Struggling students, like Amelia from Beers' class, often cannot properly introduce the information they try to express, get caught up in the exciting details of a story without properly establishing setting, conflict, etc. and present the story out of order.  A student's method of retelling a story is a window into his or her actual reading of the story; if the story emerges jumbled and unintelligible during a retelling, it can be safely assumed that it is jumbled and unintelligible in that student's mind as well.

Retellings are a good way to notice insufficiencies in student reading at the beginning of a school-year but are also skills that students can improve and be assessed on throughout the year.  Amelia, for instance, had improved her retelling skills markedly by February.  Beers provides an example of Amelia's growth on page 153 and the difference is surprising.  "Amelia stops to provide an introduction for the listener... she remembers to give us the setting... Amelia thinks to provide the characters' names purposefully instead of in a haphazard approach..." writes Beers of the student's progress (153).

Retelling provides guidelines for students who need blanks to fill in asked to take a great deal of information and make sense of all of it.  It helps them split stories into chunks that can be more easily analyzed, rather than try to grapple with the whole of it all at once.  Additionally, retelling provides teachers wit valuable information about how their students think.  "Now her teacher knows that Amelia can absorb information; she just has trouble processing that information in a way that lets her share it meaningfully with others" (154).  Amelia did the work, she just needed some "traffic signs" instructing her where to go with it.

Works Cited

Beers, Kylene. When Kids Can't Read, What Teachers Can Do:  A Guide for Teachers, 6-12. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2003. Print.