Guess The Story

Summer vacation has finally started and I am looking forward to reading Jan Richardson’s book, The Next Step In Guided Reading, from cover to cover.    

I am passionate about guided reading instruction and I’ve had this book for months now, but I’ve only had time to skim it.  It is on my summer reading list and…I didn’t get very far when I had to stop reading and design a new literacy station!  Many of you may already have this station in your classroom, but if not, I wanted to share with you one of Jan’s suggestions for an oral retelling station. 

  

To organize an oral retelling station, simply place your read aloud books in the center for students to retell.   To make this activity fun, Jan suggests to copy and to laminate the book covers and put them in the workstation. Then you will teach the children to play “Guess the Story”.

To play “Guess The Story”, one child will choose a familiar book cover from the box and retell the story with a beginning, middle, and end.  The other children in the group will guess the title of story.  Children take turns retelling different stories.  Model how to play “Guess the Story”.    (That’s the key!  Model this station beginning on the second day of school ~ use your read-aloud(s) from the first day of school.)  Do this each day for two or three minutes, allowing students to model how to use this station and after a week you can add it to the task board.  Here’s the best part, by the third week of school, you will have a station full of ten or more familiar books ready for oral retelling!

I decided to make the featured book cards small enough so that when one child chooses a book cover the other children in the group will not see it!  If you’re interested in a few of my featured September books, you can grab the cards here!

Simple, Easy, and Teacher Friendly!