Scenario
Retelling is the effective tool to assess the students’ comprehension of the text while reading with references to understanding the order of events and key points of the story. Retelling is important to assess the students’ abilities in constructing the texts and organizing the responses to the guided questions if they are necessary. Moreover, retelling is helpful for the teacher to pay attention to the points which are added or inferred by students while retelling the texts (Gunning, 2010, p. 91-92).
To conduct a retelling assessment, a student from the second grade was selected with the help of the classroom teacher. The age-appropriate text for reading was chosen to assess the retelling (“Tadpole Teasing” by Kara Waite) (Waite, n.d.). “Tadpole Teasing” is a fiction book that is why the “Retelling Rubric and Scoring Form” for fiction is used to assess the student’s skills in retelling.
Before asking to start reading the story, I drew the student’s attention to the fact that I would like to listen to her retelling the story after reading. The student started reading the text. The reading was rather good and relevant for the student’s age and level. When the reading was finished I asked the student to retell the text. To guarantee the correct and full retelling of the story, I used the following phrase, “Pretend I have not read the story.
Please, tell it to me”. To record the retelling, a dictaphone was used. I took notes while the student was retelling the story in order to fix the details omitted or added to the plot. The retelling was guided with the help of questions to get more information and assist students to cope with some difficulties experienced with retelling. The guided questions are taken from the appropriate retelling form (How does the story start? Do you know the main characters and can you tell me something about them? Tell me about the problem/conflict/situation of the story. What are the most important things that happen in the story?). The student’s responses to the guided questions were recorded.
The student retold the story in clear language, using the full sentences organized sequentially. When the retelling was finished I asked the student about her desire to add any details to the retelling. The student concentrated on the fact that tadpoles discussed in the story were rather cruel in relation to the main character Taddy because they liked teasing.
Retelling/Comprehension Summary; Fiction Retelling Rubric
Retelling/Comprehension Summary
Fiction Retelling Rubric
Scoring directions: Score the retelling with one number score for each of the areas.
Prompt suggestions (the recorded responses to guided questions):
- How does the story start?
- – There was Taddy. Taddy was a tadpole.
- Do you know the main characters and can you tell me something about them?
- – Taddy is the main character of the story. Taddy was a tadpole, like the other tadpoles. The other tadpoles are also the characters of the story. They were teasing Taddy when Taddy’s legs grew, and they said it was strange.
- Tell me about the problem/conflict/situation of the story.
- – Taddy’s legs grew, and Taddy was not like the other tadpoles anymore. It looked strange. The other tadpoles were teasing Taddy because it was not like tadpoles. They said it was odd. Tadpoles were cruel to Taddy.
- What are the most important things that happen in the story?
- – Tadpoles’ legs became to grow, and they saw they were frogs. Tadpoles understood Taddy was growing faster. Tadpoles were excited to become frogs.
Assessment Summary
Having examined the student’s results according to the Fiction Retelling Rubric, it is possible to state that the student is a competent at retelling, but she would benefit from the activities to improve comprehension and detail retention. The student distinguishes the beginning, middle, and end of the story, retelling the associated events completely. The sequence of events is also followed strictly. The main characters, conflict, and idea are identified and described correctly. The retelling is prompted minimally with the help of the basic guided questions. Thus, the student comprehends the story, its characters, and conflict correctly, with a rather high level of competence.
Nevertheless, the student’s concentration on details is not enough. Retelling the story in sequence, the student omits some details described in the book. Thus, the student does not tell about Taddy’s growing back legs first and than front legs and about Taddy’s tail becoming smaller as the points to surprise the other tadpoles and leading to the conflict. The details which are provided by the student are not essential. It is important to pay attention to the student’s focusing on details and the detail retention with the help of the appropriate activities.
The student required some prompts to speak about the connection of the story’s conflict and the personal experience. That is why, it is important to work on context and improve the student’s understanding of the conflict with references to the experience in order to draw correct conclusions about the main idea of the story. Thus, the main idea and conflict of the story were identified correctly, but with omitting the necessary details helpful to understand the situation and draw conclusions.
Analysis of the Experience
The retelling assessment is necessary to examine students’ abilities to comprehend the material while reading age-appropriate texts. Moreover, I have learnt that retelling the text orally, the student develop his or her abilities and skills in constructing texts independently. Retelling is more effective than the process of answering questions about the story because students concentrate on the information they remember, try to organize it similarly to the structure of the text, and learn how to determine the conflict and main idea and describe characters.
Thus, focusing on the aspects of the student’s retelling the story, it is possible to determine the weaknesses in the students’ grasping the main idea, remembering details, or organizing the events in sequence. The concentration on the students’ abilities to comprehend the text with the help of retelling is necessary to develop strategies to overcome the possible difficulties and improve skills.
The benefits of retelling assessments for teachers is the ability to concentrate on the full picture of students’ understanding the text with references to the skills of presenting the correctly organized text with necessary details. When students answer questions, they rarely present the additional information. Retelling the text, students can add or infer some details, and the teacher can conclude about the level of students’ comprehending the text with the help of the Retelling Rubric and Retelling/Comprehension Rubric.
The score determined after retelling helps focus on the aspects of the students’ skills which require their further development. The teacher is able to discuss the individual abilities of students to comprehend and retell texts and respond to their needs. The benefits for the students are in abilities to improve their retelling with references to the score and control the results basing on the retelling/comprehension score to satisfy the comprehension and retelling needs.
The Retelling Rubric helps assess the main aspects of the students’ comprehending the story which are the identification of the structure, setting, plot, characters, idea and conflict, and order of events. The Retelling/Comprehension Rubric also helps assess students’ abilities in relating the idea of the story to the students’ experience. Thus, to complete the task effectively, there should be guided questions asking students to relate the story’s characters and events to their own experience while discussing the main idea or conflict because students can experience difficulties while providing such information and drawing conclusions without the necessary prompts. I am inclined to use the question about students’ experience as a prompt to conduct the next retelling assessments.
The Development of the Comprehension Skill
- Basing on the results of the retelling assessment, it is necessary to focus on and remediate such comprehension skill as the ability to provide the essential details while describing and discussing the story’s plot and characters. The inability to concentrate on the essential details can prevent students from grasping the connection between the events and points which influence the story’s development.
- The student whose abilities to retell and comprehend the story “Tadpole Teasing” were assessed with the help of the Retelling Rubric demonstrated the developed abilities in organizing the retelling with following the structure of the story, in identifying characters and connecting events correctly with minimal prompts. However, there were some difficulties with presenting the necessary details about the characters and the events depicted in the story. These details are important to understand the main conflict. That is why, to improve the student’s comprehension, it is necessary to develop the skills in focusing on the details presented in the story not only to identify but also to provide essential details about characters, plot, and theme.
- The two learning experiences or activities which can be used to introduce and practice the abilities in focusing on and remembering details with their further providing are the usage of the prediction strategy before reading and preview of the text with encouraging students to refer to predictions while reading the story. To predict the plot of the story and motivate students to focus on the details, it is important to pay attention to the title and illustrations, asking some questions: “What do you think about the title of the story?”, “What is the theme of the story we will be reading?”, “What pictures are connected with the story’s title?”. The questions are also important to predict the setting of the story, “What pictures help you understand the setting?”.
After previewing the text, it is important to encourage students to refer to the predictions made in order to confirm or not any considerations and predictions made before reading. This activity helps students develop attention and concentrate on the details depicted in the story to compare them with predictions.
References
Gunning, T. (2010). Creating literacy instruction for all students. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon/Pearson Education.
Waite, K. (n.d.). Tadpole teasing. Web.