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Retell A Story In Action with the Ist Family!

February 18, 2015 No Comments

Okay Elsa the joke is over…the cold really does bother me anyway!  I think it goes without saying that it’s time for Spring to come rolling in.  I’m tired of the cold, craziness with the kids that comes with too much indoor recess, and a puppy who constantly wants to put his snout in every snow pile!  


I wanted to get my kids engaged in our reading this week so I thought it was a great time to introduce my Ist family to the kiddos.  They loved them!  We introduced the idea of what makes a good story retell and discussed how difficult it can be to remember every. little. piece of information from a story when asked to retell.  This was a great introduction to our retelling activities and our new family members.  We started right away with our new retelling chant…


All the kids loved the chant and my little cheer girls were all ready to show us how it’s done.  Retell, retell means tell it again…Oh Yeah!  There was lots of talk about what retell really means and they were quickly able to understand it after hearing the chant. We’ll be dancing to this a lot more as the week goes on.

After we practiced the chant, the kids were introduced to each member of the Ist family.  I decided to display the posters on my anchor chart to do the introduction.  After we practice throughout the week, I plan on hanging these posters above my reading table for easy reference.

The kids turned their names into a quick tune and got the idea of the order the family members should come in quickly.  We repeated the chant A LOT throughout the day!  

After the introduction we listened to our read aloud for the week.  One of my winter favorites, The Mitten by Jan Brett.
Throughout the story, which surprisingly was a first time for most, we stopped and talked about what the gist of the story was.  The kids did a great job taking the characters names and giving a quick sneak peek of what the story is mostly about.   We continued to read and named the animals that went into the mitten for our list part of the retelling.  Before we ended our read aloud, I asked the kids to turn and talk to a partner about what the twist was.  There was a lot of “Ahh Ahhh Achhooo!!!” being acted out to their partners to show the bear sneezing! 

To end our first day with the Ist family, I passed out laminated bookmarks of each Ist family member to the students.  Using their bookmarks, they had to retell the story in their own words.  They did a great job!  

There was a lot of talk of can we pleeeeaaaaase bring these home?!  That’s music to my teacher ears!  I’m planning on having the kids keep these in their book baggies so we can use them in guided reading and read to self to help with retelling.  

I’ll be back throughout the week with more activities that we do to help my littles master retelling a story with our new friends, the Ists!

I posted the retelling chant as a freebie on tpt, please feel free to stop on by and download it!  I hope your kids find it as helpful as mine did to retell a story!


For more activities with the adorable Ist family visit my tpt shop for the rest of the packet here!



Stay warm everyone!

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Welcome!
Welcome!
Hi! I’m Jayme! A former elementary teacher turned stay at home mom sharing toddler activities, mom tips, and educational resources to help you learn and play with your children. I believe in the power of PLAY and creating meaningful activities for you and your little ones to enjoy together.

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