Retelling Stories with Structure
Retell stories including key details in sequence, describe characters, settings, and major events using evidence from the text, and describe the overall structure of a story (beginning, middle, ending)
What a learner can do afterwards
- Retell a familiar story in order, including at least three key details from beginning, middle, and end
- Describe a character's appearance, actions, or personality using details from the text
- Explain how the beginning of a story introduces the characters and setting, and how the ending concludes the action
1 · Read
When you retell a story, you tell it again in your own words, in the order it happened. A good retelling has three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Think about Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Beginning: Goldilocks finds a house in the woods. Middle: she tries the porridge, the chairs, and the beds. End: the bears come home and she runs away. Each part uses real details from the story.
You retell a story for someone who was not there. Start at the beginning, where your listener meets who the story is about and where it happens. Keep the parts in the same order, or the story stops making sense. Tell the important things that happened, not every single word from the page.
When you describe a character, take the description from the book. What do they say? What do they do? Point to a moment on the page that shows it. Liking or disliking a character is a feeling, and a feeling on its own is not a description, so a strong description always has the book standing behind it.
A story has a beginning, a middle, and an end, so retell it in that order and back up your character descriptions with details from the book.
2 · Watch
Take it off screen
Where it sits
Where this leads
24 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.