Re-telling with Book Creator

One of the skills we work on in grade three is learning to re-tell stories well. It is a good way to check for listening skills, comprehension and speaking skills.

Before we had iPads, we did the work on paper with the students writing the story. It was never a favorite activity of theirs.....nor was it a favorite of mine. There were pages and pages of details to write. We sometimes got distracted by spelling and grammar and punctuation rather than focusing on whether or not they were re-telling the story well. Some kids got bogged down in the writing and I wondered if, as a result, I was really able to determine if they were bogged down with the writing or if they really could re-tell the story.  Some became really prolific writers and seemed to make up their own story rather than re-telling the story we were focusing on.

Book Creator has changed all that for us. The kids love working with the app. We stream lined the process today so that everyone was quite effecient. We have done projects on Book Creator in the past and sometimes it's easy to get distracted on editing background and text colors and adding all sorts of extra pictures. We were able to avoid that today.

One thing that surprised me when they were re-telling today was their expression. I didn't expect to hear so much fluency. Some of them used great expression and fun voices when they were re-telling the story.

These are some of the pages we used in the past when working on re-telling skills.

 

Today's instructions:

1. Plan your words: To stay organized we first made notes about the six pages of the story. We wrote down key words that would help us remember what they needed to say for each page. It didn't take too long, likely because everyone wanted to hurry up and get to iPads. The nice things about the boxes on the planning sheet was there was room for some words, but not a lot.....just enough to remind them hat they wanted to say for each page.

2. Make the title page: I had them simply write the title, the author and "retold by....". No pictures. Just the necessary details.
 

3. Take pictures: The next task was to take all the pictures. Focusing on one skill at a time made things a little more effecient. I was amazed at how quickly some kids took the pictures and got them situated on each page.

 

4. Add your voice: Instead of writing their re-telling, they were just able to re-tell with their voice. I had them use the notes they took to re-tell.

 

5. Fancy it up: Once the recording was all finished they could go back and start making everything look fancy. In the past some kids spent hours editing text color and background. The way we laid it out they got the work done right away and then got to get to all the play involved with editing. Time well spent!

I thought it might be tricky having many people recording at time same time, but it worked out famously. Everyone was very focused and the noise level was like an old fashioned quiet library...without the cranky librarian shushing everyone.

We uploaded the stories to Showbie to hand them in and I put them on Vimeo so we could share them with our parents. Most kids were able to finish in the hour they had to work on it. A few will need a bit of time tomorrow - but not a lot.

 

I will grade them using this rubric: 

All in all it was a great afternoon!!

Revealing Comprehension

I came across a great tweet this morning. Jennifer Britton said: Help students reveal their comprehension, not test it.

It sounds like she is at a conference (#TCRWP) and the keynote speaker is David Booth. I googled him and found all sorts of interesting resources. Time to go hunting for some of his jewels!

These little words were just what I needed as I read over my students Reading Response entries this morning. I got thinking about some of things we do as well as things we could be doing better in our classroom.  It is definitely a work in progress.

Ways to reveal comprehension:

1. Improve Listening Comprehension

Children learn by listening and listening is a skill that can be improved. It would be interesting to research to see the advantages children who are read to a lot have over those who have not been read to.

I am working on reading aloud to my students. I wonder if we write down the main events of what we read as we go, if that would help. Perhaps some children would benefit from having the main ideas from reading ahead of time. Perhaps we will work on this by doing some blogging. I don't want it to be too cumbersome. Reading should be enjoyable - but if a student isn't absorbing anything we are reading, then perhaps these kinds of activities will help.

2. Talk about Texts

There are so many ways we can share understanding from reading. Book talks, storytelling, writing, creating art from stories, blogging, etc. We need to do this more! My students will compose an entry once a week to share something about what they've been reading this week. We read Open Court stories daily and discuss them. We also have a chapter book going all the time that is being read aloud.

3. Encourage parents to read WITH their children at home.

Many think that once their children can read independently they don't need to read with them. I argue that children continue to benefit from reading with parents. Please read with your child every day! Great discussions will come out of the books you read. It will strengthen your relationship as well. I promise.

4. Increase Vocabulary

If students don't understand common words or juicier words, they get lost in the story. We will start working on this by working on the thesaurus that the students have in their writing binders.

Improving Reading Comprehension

Sometimes parents worry when their kids doesn't seem to enjoy or don't seem to comprehend the things that they read. I believe reading should be natural and enjoyable. If your child doesn't enjoy reading the best thing to do is to read with them. Snuggle up, make it special time. If they don't want to read to you, don't fuss. Read to them. Read chapter books together. Encourage them to take the book to school and read a chapter during DEAR time at school and read that chapter on your own. Talk about it later in the day and compare notes. Talking about it should be natural and fun.

"Were you surprised when...."
"My favorite part was...."
"Why do you think..."

They don't need to be grilled on what they read.

Think about how it is when you go to a movie. You don't say, "Okay, re-tell the move in your own words." Instead you talk about what your favorite parts were, how sad you were when something happened or how funny something else was.

That's how we should talk about books. Reading doesn't always have to be an academic and assessment riddled experience.

Did I mention that if your child doesn't like reading, you need to make a concerted effort to read with them? It is critical!

iPads for Re-telling

Our school is blessed with a lot of tools to use for technology. My challenge has been to stop what we are doing and think about different ways we can do it, and use technology for the same activity.

One of the skills we work on is re-telling a story. Today we took one of our Open Court stories and instead if doing the traditional re-telling on paper, we did it in Book Creator.

I was amazed at how I could give the instructions and basically say, now go make this in Book Creator. I didn't show them how to use Book Creator, and magically, they did go do it! They took pictures of illustrations from the book and added the text. Some chose to speak the story instead of typing it. That is okay too - the skill we are testing is re-telling, so if they write or speak, doesn't matter to me!

Not only were they totally able to figure it out, they loved doing it! We had an hour to work on this and at first things started a little slowly, but they got motoring quite quickly. When the recess bell rang they begged to be able to continue working on it.

They never have begged to continue re-telling a story. Never. Ever!

At the end of our work somebody discovered talk to text. This. Is. Going. To. Change. Our. Lives!