Members of the MiddleWeb Discussion List and other interested
teachers are joining together to explore the Writing Workshop
and other ideas about supporting young adolescent writers and
readers. Juli Kendall, a reading-writing teacher/coach in Long
Beach, California, is helping moderate the discussion. Juli also
posts a weekly journal entry from her reading/writing classroom.
This year, Juli will focus on her efforts to integrate subject
matter into her reading and writing workshop approach. In her
first journal of the year, she explains
the rationale behind this move and some of her thinking about
how she hopes to accomplish this goal.
Find out more about our project at our Reading/Writing
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.
If you'd like to join the daily discussion that parallels Juli's
Journals, find out how here.
Every day in our classroom, it's the same story. Piles of informational
text. Baskets of leveled books. Lots of kids.
I sit at a kidney shaped table listening to them read and discuss
their reading with each other. It's an amazing experience, but
it makes me wonder, "What is it that our kids understand
in their reading, and what is it that confuses them?"
During this year we'll do retellings periodically to check for
comprehension of informational text. I want to find out when things
click for them and when they don't quite understand. In order
to choose "next steps" for instruction and make teaching
decisions, I'll follow the progress on retelling for seven students
(Byron, Rin, Loren, Jeannie, Daniel, Juan, and Viviana) throughout
the year.
Where we begin
The initial retelling occurs during the first days of school as
one of our authentic assessments. The directions I give the kids
for retelling are always the same.
-- Read the text. (Sometimes I do a running record before the
kids do a retelling and sometimes they read it on their own.)
-- Think about what you want to say.
-- Read the text again. (Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.)
-- Turn the paper over and write the retelling.
-- If you need to check some information, you may turn the paper
back over to find it. (I always allow the kids to go back to the
text since this is an important skill that also transfers to standardized
testing.)
-- Never copy!
This selection from an older edition of a Scott Foresman Fourth
Grade Reader is the first informational text I use for retelling
each year. I've used it for eight years, and I'm very familiar
with it. It's a good mix of narrative and expository.
The beautiful bay with its sandy shores was a favorite resting place for many wild water birds. Ducks, herons, and loons came there to feed.
Then one day a big ship spilled oil over the water in the bay. The oil was black, sticky, and almost as thick as tar. When the oil floated in toward the shores of the bay, many wild birds became covered with it.
The oil made the wings of the wild birds heavy. It stuck their feathers together and flattened the soft down that grows under their feathers. They couldn't swim or fly away. Even the air had the smell of oil in it, and breathing it made the birds sick. Hundreds of oily birds crawled up on the shore or lay in the water, panting for air.
Many of the people who lived nearby came to help the birds. Bob and Gary Hill and their parents came. They had heard a newscaster on television asking people to help clean the oil off the birds.
"You can't wash them with gasoline or with soap and water," the newscaster had warned. "Those cleaners will kill the birds. You must clean them with salad oil and corn meal, so please bring these items and some soft rags."
(Qualitative Reading Inventory, 3rd edition, is a good
source for leveled expository text to use for retellings and running
records.)
I adapted the Nonfiction
Retelling Rubric I use to match what I want the kids to know
and be able to do when retelling informational text. I call this
new rubric the Retelling
Rubric for Informational Text, and I use it to score
their retellings.
One thing that's tricky about scoring retellings is that conventions
and grammar do not enter in to the score. Yes, you want them
to do their best work and use their best grammar, spelling, etc.
But what's important here is their comprehension of the text.
It takes a while to learn how to read retellings with your focus
on the content -- setting the rest aside. But it gives tons of
information about how and what kids comprehend in text. It's fascinating
because you can follow the trails of their thinking.
To give an idea of where the kids are at the start of the year,
I've included the criteria for each retelling score as well as
samples of the students' work.
Criteria for a score of 4
--Accurately retells important concepts from the text in own
words.
--Organizes the information using appropriate text structure(s)
through out the retelling (e.g. sequence, question/answer, cause/effect,
compare/contrast, problem/solution, description)
--Makes use of text features (maps, charts, diagrams, photographs,
etc.)
--Utilizes key vocabulary appropriately.
--Synthesizes concepts from the text, using textual evidence and
prior knowledge to draw inferences and generate original conclusions.
No one wrote a retelling that scored a "4".
Criteria for a score of 3-Proficient Level
--Explains the main ideas and supporting details from the
text in own words.
--Organizes the information using appropriate text structure (e.g.
sequence, question/answer, cause/effect, compare/contrast, problem/solution,
description)
--Makes use of text features (maps, charts, diagrams, photographs,
etc.)
--Utilizes some key vocabulary.
--Attempts to draw inferences/generalizations and supports them
with textual evidence and prior knowledge (schema)
Byron's retelling scored a 3- because he attempted to draw
an inference.
"There is a oil spill, It wastes on a bird and it makes a wing heavy, A news broadcaster sends a message. The message is that they have to clean the bird's off. Two kids respond and they help wash of the birds. I think when they try to wash the birds they will get sick some kind of way. The ducks might get sick if they don't get wash off pretty soon."
Criteria for a score of 2
--Demonstrates a partial understanding of the text, randomly
restating facts/concepts, or relying heavily on the author's words.
--May copy some material from text.
--Organization is less defined; text structure is weak.
--May use some text features (maps, charts, diagrams, photographs,
etc.)
--May utilize some key vocabulary.
--May include inaccuracies or omissions.
--May be short.
Examples of retellings that scored a "2".
Rin "The duck got oil on their fether and newcast was talking about the duck and a lot of people came to see the duck and clean the duck with gasoline or soap water but the news cast said you must clean them with salad oil and corn meal and they will be clean."
Loren
"First, their was a buitiful bay.
Next, a ship came by and throw soil.
Then, the soil was sticky and black
Finally a women went to clean the water."
Jeannie (2+) "Today is a beautiful day for brid to rest in a place to lay eggs, brid came to one of the people that live next to beach and one day a ship spilled black oil and the bird got stuck and the feather got stuck to. One of the bird land on the sand and people that live next to the beach came and look at the bird. One day the family (the family save the bird) call everyone to help the birds.
Criteria for a score of 1
--Relates a limited amount of information, conveying little
or no understanding of the text.
--May copy extensively from text.
--May include some inaccuracies, omissions or confusions.
--May include information that is off topic
--May be very short.
Examples of retellings that scored "1."
Daniel "This story is about people who save the wild birds from a oil spill."
Juan "The beautiful bay with it's shores was a favorite resting place for many wild water birds. One day ship spilled oil over the water in the bay. Bob and Gary and pernets made a newscater on televisision asking to help clean off oil off the birds"
Viviana "one day there was some duck that was hungry and some kids where pasing by and saw the duck that was hungry so they whent to a store and cave the duck some food. There was a big garbage full of soil the soild fall down and mde a big mess at the grownd and some body from the tv said that the ones that do it need to clean it."
In my 2001-02 Reading Workshop Journal, Week
10, "Retelling and Assessing from Rubrics," I describe
how I go about teaching kids to do retellings. That's the next
step in our "retelling process." Here's what I wrote:
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.
So why do I have kids do retellings? They offer a window into
their thinking about their reading as well as their comprehension.
After reading the kids' retellings, it's easy for me to see how
they get confused. Just because they are able to read it, doesn't
mean that they always understand it. And that's what it's all
about -- without understanding, it's just not reading.
Download Juli's
Retelling Rubric for Informational Text (PDF file - 8k)
SEE Juli's Curriculum Map for Content Literacy - Unit One
Read next week's journal
Read last week's journal
Read Juli's backgrounder about her work
Back to Juli's journal index
Back to the Writing/Reading Workshop Index
Page