Into the Woods | A Week of 5-Finger Retelling

Last week we kicked off our forest unit in kindergarten and although we're doing it at a distance, I still found some pretty amazing resources and tools to help bring it all together. I introduced inferring and connected it with the prior week's learning of making text-to-self connections. I was amazed to see that my kiddos were beginning to understand inferences in their reading.

This week we're heading into review.

With May officially upon us and looking ahead to the end of the year, I've decided the best course as we continue distance learning is to review those key reading skills that will be important for them as they enter first grade next year.

So, this week we're reviewing how to retell and I'm introducing them to a new method (one we all know and love): the 5-finger retell!

The 5-Finger Retell

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.K.1-3

 
This method of retelling a story is a great way for students to remember the key elements in any story. I found a number of great anchor charts online to use as a reference for my students and their families. One of my favorites is this one from Kira of the teacher blog, The Teacher with the Owl Tattoo.

Photo | The Teacher with the Owl Tattoo

I love this visual because, although cute, it is easy to read and doesn't have a lot of distracting elements (like a lot of anchor charts out there). It's a great visual for each part of a retell:

• Setting
• Characters
• Problem
• Events (B-M-E)
• Solution

I love that an extra tidbit is the central message, or the lesson the author is teaching you about. Although we're not going into central messages directly, it's a great reminder that authors use story elements to teach us a lesson or moral from those character experiences.

This Week's Read Alouds

For my read alouds this week I stuck to our forest theme. All of the books we'll be reading and working with have settings that take place in the forest and the characters are forest animals. I love it when themes truly build upon each other! Although here in San Diego we don't have the luxury of a lot of forests (if any), it's been a lot of fun to introduce and build on my student's understanding with each passing unit.

Here's a list of the stories we'll be reading this week to practice our 5-finger retells!

P.S. I know these days it's hard to locate all of the books you want to use for your distance learning lessons, so feel free to snag the link to any of these read alouds!

The Squirrels Who Squabbled

This is such a cute story and was one introduced by a student parent! I love learning about new authors and being introduced to amazing stories! I chose this story this week because it tells the story of two squirrels who went about preparing for winter in different ways. One squirrel, Cyril, spent his time partying and not gathering food. Bruce, the other squirrel, was overly prepared with a storage chock full of food for winter. However, they both spot the very last pinecone of the season and make a charge for it. It's a fun and silly story that discusses the importance of not only sharing, but how greed can get in the way of true friendships and relationships.

It's also a great story that lends itself to a ton of ELA skills:

• story elements and retells (what I'm using it for this week)
• character development
• character traits
• central messages
• predicting and inferring
• vocabulary (squabble, spontaneous, etc.)
• rhyming words
• visualizing

...and so, so much more!

Bike On, Bear!

This is a charming story that incorporates a lot of forest animals as characters. Bear is a young cub who is pretty great at everything. He is smart, kind, and finds that most things come very easy to him. That is, until he tries to ride a bike. All of his friends can ride their bikes and even without training wheels. Bear becomes disgruntled, but learns a valuable lesson in being persistent and not giving up when learning something new.

This week we'll be using this story to retell those important events from the beginning, middle, and end of the story.

Some other great ELA skills you can use this book for are:

• story elements and retells (what I'm using it for this week)
• character development
• character traits
• central messages
• predicting and inferring
• making connections

Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?

This classic story is one my class and I read at the very beginning of the year when learning about our senses. Now, I'm bringing it back so we can track our retelling! We all know this is a great story for a number of reasons and this week Brown Bear here is going to help us visualize how events progress. With such a simple story, it's a wonderful text to practice this specific skill.

Tip: never hesitate to bring out the preschool stories kids love! Yes, the story has simple language and easy-to-spot elements, but that's what makes them so great as mentor texts for kindergartners - especially bilingual or multilingual students like mine!

By tracking and sequencing, students begin to understand that events happen in an order. This is also a great opportunity to refresh those English ordinal number words as well as vocabulary (color and animal words). The difference between using this story for sequencing and for retelling is that we aren't going to track every single animal that is seen. Rather students will be directed to share that:

• In the beginning, a brown bear sees a red bird.
• In the middle, more colored animals see other animals.



Photo | Mrs. Schmelzer's 1st Grade

• and in the end, a teacher sees her students looking at her.

So, we aren't sequencing the order of each animal that is seen, but rather summarizing what happens at the beginning, middle, and end.

Writing Extension
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.K.2
Skill: Writing complete sentences.

One way I'm extending this story is by including it in a writing activity. In writing this week we're working on writing complete sentences with an emphasis on adjectives to describe the nouns we write about. Brown Bear is another great mentor text by giving students the starter sentence. If we were in class I would use this story as a mentor sentence and we'd spend the week using it more in-depth. However, for distance learning this simple activity of having them trace and write a color word and noun to complete the sentence.

I was inspired by Mrs. Schmelzer's class book and decided to make my own writing page for students to use during distance learning this week. You can pick my template up for free by clicking the link below! During one of our live sessions I'll work with students using this template. They'll be directed to brainstorm an idea for what they want Brown Bear to see. They will use their phonetic spelling as well as rely on their color word knowledge to finish the sentence. Then, of course, they'll draw a picture of what they chose and incorporate appropriate details.

Bear Snores On

Keeping up with the bear theme within our forest unit I found this story, Bear Snores On. I am using this video read aloud since I don't personally have this story. However, it's a great one to use when thinking and practicing our 5-finger retells!

Again, we'll be discussing the key elements of our retell by remembering who the characters are (the forest animals), the setting (Bear's cave), and those important events at the beginning, middle, and end.

For all of these read alouds we're using a story map to track our thinking. I found this freebie and am using it both with students during our live sessions together, but it's a graphic organizer that is easily uploaded to Seesaw for additional retelling activities!

Story Map Freebie

Photo | Mrs. Byrd's Learning Tree

Mrs. Byrd's Learning Tree offers this story map as a freebie! I love the open spaces for students to draw their thinking and it is to the point (without the frills of clip art and fonts).