Retelling with Pete the Cat (and a Pete freebie!)

To all of my fellow school teacher peeps - Way to go on making it through the start of the year!  I am in my 12th year of teaching and I always forget how hard it is to get the year going and get into routine.

One of our first week lessons is about retelling a story - which is one of the three ways to read a book in Daily 5.  One of the ways to help littles on the third day of school understand this way to read is with our favorite feline - PETE!

We listen to the story of Pete the Cat - I Love my White Shoes and retell with my felt Pete the Cats pieces.

Then we used these buckets to walk through and kinesthetically retell the story. Students walked in a circle and stepped in each bucket then out of the bucket and onto the colored shoe.  Before students completed this activity I acted it out and changed my shoes with each bucket.

If you want the printables for this, click here.

After my littles understood retelling the story, they worked as a table to make a poster of each of the items Pete stepped in.  I love seeing my cuties work hard together, especially on the third day of school!

 

 

I also found this awesome Pete retelling activity but could not, for the life of me, print it off.  If you figure it out, please let me know.

Blessings to you this year!

Retelling Stories is "Weinderful"!

This past week we worked on retelling stories and my cuties above helped me out!  (Well, not my actual pups, but rather wiener-dog inspired lessons.)

All year, we have been using my retell ribbon to retell stories that we have read.  I am sure many of you have seen this floating around pinterest.  I made it last year and my cuties from last year really learned how to retell using it.  It has been great to use it all year with this group.

Basically it's a ribbon with these wooden pieces and buttons glued to it.  The tree represents the setting.  The cat represents characters.  The three buttons represent the beginning, middle, and end.  The ribbon represents how the author tied up his message in the book.  (What did we learn from this book?)  

We made our own retell ribbons to keep  in our book boxes this week.

 Click on the picture above to print off the pieces from my website.

I will admit that in the beginning I didn't go into a lot detail about beginning, middle and end until this last week.  I basically just let them tell me three things from the story at the start of the year and then moved into telling me more big ideas toward the middle of the year.  This past week we really focused on what the beginning, middle and end meant.

I used this book:

It is so stinkin' cute and I met the author at the International Reading Association a few weeks ago and he autographed it for us!  (This book also travels with our weekend friend.)

Then we wrote what happened at the beginning, middle, and end, with my guidance on my Kim Adsit inspired chart.

(Please forgive my terrible printing and unfinished chart.  This time of year gets crazy.  I will cutesie it up for next year - I promise!)

Then I typed up what my cuties had helped me write and we made our own wiener wolves.

 How cute are it's tiny legs!

Well, I am heading to bed.  We have 5 1/2 school days left.  I am incredibly sad to leave this group.  They have touched my heart in a huge way.  I just want to make every day count and make all 5 1/2 special for them.  

Have a happy week!

A Wonderful Week...

This week has been busy in a lot of unusual ways.  My student teacher continued her total teach, so I worked on all kinds of projects for next school year.  This was my first year in kindergarten, so I have spent a lot of the year reflecting on how to be a more effective teacher next year.  I made a lot of graphic organizers to use next year.  Here are some pics.

 

This one is an idea from Kim Adsit's website.

 

This one is for our families lessons.  The pieces that you I used are from Kim Adsit's Family Fun Unit on TPT.

 

More Kim Adsit inspired graphic organizers.

 

A Story Map

 

We also had our annual Parent/Student Academy on Thursday night.  It's a night where teachers and community members teach classes to parents or students.  The parent sessions range from how to create a budget to how to make healthy meals.  Student sessions are fun things like manicures or kite making.

One of my fellow kindergarten teachers and I taught a parent class about helping their child with reading strategies at home.  It went really well.  The parents seemed quite happy to know more strategies to use at home that mirrored what we use in the classroom.  I was so happy to wear my strategies apron that I purchased form Lesson Plan SOS.  I don't have a picture of me in it, but maybe I can ask a friend to snap one tomorrow.

One thing that we discussed in my session with the parents was how to help their child retell a story.  I use this graphic organizer with my kinders to help them retell a story, so I showed it to the parents who attended.

 

I provided the parents with a smaller version to take home with them.  This is the same one that my kinders keep in their book boxes to help them remember how to retell.  You can download it here.

Basically this method of retelling a story shows young learners that they start by telling the "Who", "Where", and "What" is in the story.  That is why there is these three circles at the top of the chart.  I made them into circles so that readers can touch each one as they retell.

Then the reader tells four important parts of the story.  That is why there are four circles on the square, once again for the reader to touch each one.

Last, the reader completes the retell by telling what happened at the end.  The red reminds the readers to STOP at the end, rather than 3/4 of the way through.

I was also blessed to conduct the District Teacher of the Year interviews on Tuesday night.  I am the current district teacher, so it was a joy to interview such talented teachers in my district.  It was also nice to not be the one being interviewed this year.  Phew!

Okay, that's all for now.  If you would like the words for these organizers, just let me know.  They're nothing fancy, so I didn't know if anyone would want them.