Have students do one of the following:

• Put pictures from a story in order and orally retell what happened in the story.
• Retell a story in chronological order using a strategy such as five-finger retell.
• Draw pictures of what happened in a story and put them in the correct order.
• Fill out a graphic organizer that puts the story in chronological order.

When collecting responses, evaluate students with a rubric. Two possible rubrics are:

Simplified retell rubric 1:

1. The student is unable to retell the events in a story without adult assistance.
2. The student is able to retell the events in a story, but not in any particular order.
3. The student is able to retell all key events in a story, in chronological order, but does not use transition words.
4. The student is able to retell all key events in a story, in chronological order, using transition words.

Comprehensive retell rubric: The teacher can also create a more in-depth rubric that focuses on certain topics.

Examples:

• Number of events/sequences recalled
• Use of transition words
• Identification of story elements such as characters and setting
• Number of details, use of vocabulary from the text
• Amount of prompting needed

Notes:

• The teacher should assess whether students can retell what occurred in the story in both chronological order and with sufficient detail. Sufficient detail is explaining the characters in the story, identifying the setting, and retelling what the problem was and how it was solved.
• Retelling requires more than just stating the main idea; it requires students to paraphrase in their own words what happened.