The Common Core Teacher Blog: Reading Graphic Organizer for Retelling a Story

Hello Everyone,

This is my very first blog. I am so excited to be a part of this new world of blogging. Teachers, I hope you find some ideas that you love and can use in your classroom.

My first idea to share is a graphic organizer that I designed. It is a retelling graphic organizer. I used this graphic organizer before my class took their midyear state required DIBELS Next Test. It was extremely successful! My student's scores for the retelling portion of this assessment were excellent.

In using this form, we took the weekly reading story and completed the retelling graphic organizer together. I modeled how I wanted the students to retell the story using the graphic organizers. I explained that I wanted students to touch each part of their hand as they described the characters, setting, problem, events, and solution for the story. Then, I called on several students to retell the story just as I had modeled. They did a wonderful job! My students enjoyed presenting their retelling of our story. The best part of this lesson is that students remembered how to retell the story without looking back to the graphic organizer.

I plan on using this retelling strategy all year long for DIBELS Next, guided reading, and Fountas and Pinnell assessments.