East Detroit Public Schools
Lesson Design

Author: Kimberly Ayrault
Subject: English Language Arts
Grade: Second
Title: Story Retellings

Length of Unit: Approximately 2 weeks

Materials Needed:
Power Macintosh G3 Computer
large TV Monitor
several books

Software:
Arthur's Birthday (a Living Book)

Standards-Based Outcomes (MDE):

English Language Arts:

I. Meaning and Communication

Content Standard I, 1: All students will read and comprehend general and technical material.

1. Use reading for multiple purposes, such as enjoyment, gathering information, and learning new procedures.

Content Standard I, 3: All students will focus on meaning and communication as they listen, speak, view, read, and write in personal, social, occupational, and civic contexts.

5. Employ multiple strategies to construct meaning while reading, listening to, viewing, or creating texts. Examples include retelling, predicting, generating questions, examining picture cues, discussing with peers, using context clues, and creating mental pictures.

X. Critical Standards

Content Standard X, 12: All students will develop and apply personal, shared, and academic criteria for the enjoyment, appreciation, and evaluation of their own and others’ oral, written, and visual texts.

1. Identify the qualities of their own oral, visual, and written texts that help them communicate effectively for different purposes. Examples include content, styles, and organizational devices, such as the use of a chronological sequence in the telling of a story.

Prior Knowledge:

The children are familiar with, but not proficient in, retelling books which they have read during the year.

Cue Set:

• The class members as a whole group listen to the software program Arthur's Birthday on the TV monitor.
• The teacher leads a discussion of the story elements and the sequence of main events.

Best Shot Instruction:

• Individually each student listens to the story once again and does the software program activity called, “And Then What Happened?”. This gives them the opportunity to practice the retelling skill in a different format.
• In groups the children work on retellings of familiar books, poems, and nursery rhymes.

Reteaching and Enrichment:

• The students pick familiar books from the classroom library or their homes. They complete story maps to organize all the necessary information in preparation for retelling the stories correctly.
• They then do oral retellings of their selections to the class.

Review and Closure:

The teacher and students discuss the important parts of any story, the main characters, setting, problem, solution, and main events, which comprise a successful retelling.

Assessment:

The children are continually assessed throughout the school year with retellings. They show mastery by doing them consistently with 90% accuracy.

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