Self-selected members of the MiddleWeb Discussion List are joining
together to explore the Reading Workshop and other ideas about supporting
young adolescent readers. Juli Kendall, a reading teacher/coach in Long
Beach, California, is helping moderate the discussion. Juli is also keeping
a weekly journal of her own Reading Workshop initiative. Find out more about
our project at our Reading Workshop homepage.
You'll find Juli's background article here.
Links to many of the tools created by Juli and her colleagues are embedded
in these journals. Most often, when you click on them, a PDF file will begin
to download. You'll find a list of the downloads here.
Retelling has proven to be a powerful technique for helping our students
get involved in the story elements (characters, plot, setting, sequence
of events, main idea, etc.) of a piece of text, either fiction or non-fiction.
Retellings collected over time help us see students' development as readers
who can organize the sequence of their reading selections. But retellings
do not make a complete reading program! So we wanted to be cautious about
doing too much retelling and doing it for too long at the beginning of our
Reading Workshop.
We start by modeling retelling using flow maps. Thinking
Maps, a program for teaching students how to use graphic organizers,
includes flow maps as one of the ways to assist students with Reading Comprehension
in sequencing and ordering information. Thinking Maps are a great resource
for helping student's build understanding in Reading. They have several
examples on their web site.
Once students understand the process for using flow maps to do retelling
of text, we let them work with a partner doing a retelling together. Finally,
when they are really successful together, they do them independently. They
record them in their Reading Notebooks so we have a record of their growth
over time.
Rubrics help us measure progress
In order to judge their progress and make decisions about next steps in
teaching we use a set of 4 rubrics. The set includes rubrics for Sequencing,
Fiction and Non-Fiction Retelling, as well as, Summarizing. The Retelling
Rubrics are adapted from our district ones to reflect the use of flow maps
and the issue of copying from the text. Teachers on my grade level team
at the middle school where I worked developed the other two, for Sequencing
and Summarizing. We collaborated across content areas to come up with assessments
that we could use and discuss as a team. They also reflected our school's
focus on Literacy and Reading Comprehension across the content areas.
Download the rubrics at this page
We teach students to score their retelling flow maps using the Sequencing
Rubric first. It is the simplest and is easily understood. Using the rubric
over time prompts the students to include certain things in their retellings.
It has proven to be very useful for teachers and students.
Then, we move to the Retelling Rubrics for Fiction and Non-fiction Text.
Since these require knowledge of text elements and the ability to differentiate
between narrative and expository text, they are more difficult.
The fourth rubric is for Summarizing. We use this after the students can
easily retell from text and identify main idea and common themes in their
reading. This rubric helps move students beyond a literal understanding
of text.
Since reading is about understanding, we teach students that using tools
like flow maps helps you get more understandings from your reading. They
enjoy taking what they are reading and making it tangible. Guiding Readers
and Writers (p.324) describes it this way (summarized):
Retelling is commonly used as a tool for assessment and/or a regular part of instruction. You will want to be careful not to overuse this technique. If retelling means students simply repeat everything they can remember after reading a text, then the task is one of memory. After all, remembering everything in the story or informational piece is not the critical act of comprehension. The readers must select important information, weave it together and integrate it with background knowledge. Reading is about responding to reading. We would not want our students to read solely for the purpose of delivering a verbatim account of their texts. Comprehension is integral to reading....
Read Juli's next journal entry
Read Juli's previous journal entry
Read Juli's backgrounder about her work
Back to Juli's journal index
Back to the Reader Workshop Index Page