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I liked that your son was able to understand the things he needed to work on when reading/comprehending. I feel the areas where he struggled are areas he will succeed in as he gets older and has more reading experience.

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I agree with your student. Sometimes the names (especially difficult names) get in the way of retelling stories. I am glad he was able to understand most of the story.

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It sounds like your son is a great reader.  I agree with you that he will progress as he gets older and has more reading experience.  I hope his love for reading continues!
I too am curious about the pretelling and the activities that go along with this. I feel this would be great to begin with my class at the beginning of school.

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Wow! Your kindergartner sounds like a pretty great reader! Theme is a challenging concept for kiddos to identify.
Alicia

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Your son sounds like a really fluent reader. I think that sometimes students are so focused on reading the correct words that they forget to remember what they read!
Alicia

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I also chose a pretty responsible and proficient reader to take the assessment. I felt more confident in her knowledge of the strategies she uses and felt she would be honest. I think that is really cool that your student wants to check-in with herself to see if she has met her goals.
Alicia

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I agree that with you that many students struggle with determining important/ unimportant details. This is something my son struggles with also. I wonder what are some strategies that are good to help teach students the differences between these?

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I did the story retelling with my son as well and I agree it did remind me of when I gave him the DRA a little. Your experience sounded similar to mine in the that he was able to retell the majority of info but still needed a little bit of help to get more detail. - LaToya

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That's awesome that you have a student that uses these strategies regularly! I agree with you that this course has inspired me to be more intentional with my graphic organizers.
-Jordan

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I bet that was interesting hearing how he evaluated himself as a reader vs how you evaluate him. I think self-evaluations can be so powerful for students!
-Jordan

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Did the results of this assessment affirm your observations of this student? I think you are right that with more exposure, this student will improve! -Jordan

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I think it's interesting that you chose to give this inventory to your son. It seems that this inventory validated some of the observations you had when listening to your son read. -Jordan

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I think inference can be very difficult for struggling readers as so much of their focus and attention goes to decoding the words.  It seems like there is little brain power left for reading between the lines.
Jackie

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I think using graphic organizers can really add to students' comprehension across content areas.  I love that you are intentionally using them more often!
Jackie

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I think kids need practice with retelling and with understanding the information that the examiner or audience is really looking for.  We teach our students to be able to tell the main idea or theme of a story which are both concise pieces of information and it can be difficult to transition to a retelling task where we are asking for more detail.
Jackie

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I agree with your last statement and think that he would be able to correctly answer if he had a model for that type of question first.
Jackie

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One strategy I used today with a cognitively impaired second grader was to have him sequence pictures from the story we read and then use that to retell.  Worked well!
Jackie

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I gave a motivation inventory to my son as well and was really pleased that he took the time to think about each question and respond in a way that he felt was accurate.  I think it says a lot about our children that they are able to really self-reflect.
Jackie

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I can see how it would be difficult to determine if students were truly having difficulty re-telling or if they were just not listening during the reading.  I'm wondering if you could re-assess the students you think have legitimate concerns in this area when you go back to in-person?
Jackie

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Wow!  She sounds very mature for a middle school student.  I think it is wonderful that she was able to make the connection to reflecting on  goals outside of school, as well.

Jackie

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I had the same observation about support strategies when giving this inventory to my son.  I think he just hasn't really had exposure or practice with them yet but given his ability to effectively use other strategies, I think that he will get there, eventually!
Jackie

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LaToya
I also gave my son the MAI assessment. His results showed that he has good declarative knowledge, planning, comprehension monitoring, debugging strategies, and evaluation. His scores were lower in information management, procedural knowledge and conditional knowledge. I feel this is accurate because as I was giving him the assessment I could tell he was really thinking about the questions before he responded. For example when the question asked "I slow down when I encounter important information" my son responded false, which is definitely true because he has been known to rush through his work since he was in kindergarten. Another example was when they asked "I stop and go back over new info that is not clear" He responded "yeah I do that a lot". It was really interesting to hear his thoughts out loud as he took this assessment.

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Alicia
I chose to give this assessment to one of my students that is just one level below grade level. I began by identifying which level of story she should be given. I was surprised because she stumbled on the level three sentences. She silently read the story and then I asked her the questions. I was not surprised to see that she had difficulty with the inferencing question. This is congruent with in class performance. She did well on the other areas. I really liked this assessment and I think it will be a great one to give to assess my intervention students progress.

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LaToya
I like the graphic organizer that examples how readers learn retelling. It's very simple and easy to follow. It lays out the the process for how readers start out with the help of the teacher to eventually independent work.

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LaToya.
I did the assessment on my son who is a 4th grader. He tested on a level 5. So I had him read the story "Hot Shoes" and them re tell me the story in his own words without giving him any prompts at first. At first his explanation was a little shaky, because he was having trouble remembering names and simple facts. So because of this he started added things tot he story that weren't actually in the story, which was kind of funny because it was like he added his own interpretation on to it. Overall he did get the gist of the story correct. I then asked him the questions that were on the prompts for me to follow and he got most of them right. I did have to refresh his memory a little bit to help him which was fine. After doing this with my son I can tell he needs a little help with retelling a story with 100% accuracy and memorizing small details, but overall he understands major events, and big themes.

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Alicia
I gave the MARSI to one of my students. She is in the Gifted and Talented program and is reading several levels above grade level. She uses most of the strategies regularly. We discussed the assessment after she completed it and she talked about how she is always thinking about what she is reading. She rereads and self-corrects when things don't make sense. She rated herself lowest in the support reading strategies. My new learning in this course has inspired me to use more graphic organizers while reading to aide in student comprehension.

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Stephanie
My kindergarten students are currently in the shared retelling part of the model. We typically retell a story by discussing the plot of the story (this sometimes confuses the students because they struggle with how big the middle part of plot can be). By the end of the year my goal is to have everyone in the independent retelling part of the model. What other strategies does everyone use for retelling a story?

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Stephanie
I gave the Level 1 Assessment Protocol to one of my kindergarten students.  He is high functioning and goes to first grade for reading. He was able to read the story independently (he read it aloud to me).  He did great with the characters of the story, the story problem and the problem resolutions.  He was able to tell me the theme of the story as well.  He did a great job explaining the inferential question.  His struggle came when he was asked to provide words to describe the character and to give the theme.  I was pleased with his overall results and feel if he was given examples on how to describe a character/setting he will be able to answer correctly with another story.

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Stephanie
I gave the MARSI to a former student of mine who is now in the 5th grade.  In kindergarten, she was in my medium group.  She worked hard and by the end of the year she could sound out CVC words .  She reached the 50 sight word goal by the end of the year.
She was able to read all of the questions and I could tell that she thought about her answer before circling a number.
Her highest score was in the Problem-Solving strategies category (4.6).  I noticed how she read each question slowly and carefully before she circled an answer and even reread some of the questions.
Her lowest score was in the Support Reading Strategies (3.2) but I feel as she gets older she will use these strategies more when reading.

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A question that I have about the model is about bridging the gap between shared retelling and independent reading. How can be successfully build bridge for students that struggling without the scaffolding? -Jordan

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In my classes, we are reading a novel so I took the questions from this assessment and adapted it to reflect the content of our book. Through my experience with this, I believe my students' ability to retell a story depends on whether or not they were paying attention when the story is being read or actually reading the chapters that were assigned to them. Since we are virtual and they had their cameras off while reading or listening, it made the validity of this assessment a little tricky for me to evaluate accurately.
-Jordan

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I gave this assessment to a student who consistently has her work done early and comes to my office hours just to chat. After taking this assessment, her results confirmed that she is pretty well in tune with her cognition. The question that she wanted to discuss with me was about her checking with herself periodically to see if she is meeting her goals. She thought this referred to grades alone but then made the connection that she could be more aware of her non-school related goals as well.
-Jordan

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Jackie
I gave the MARSI to my 2nd grade son.  We first talked about the scale so that he really understood what each number meant.  This was his first time taking a rating scale like this and he stated that it was "fun." As we went through the questions I think he really tried to answer honestly and he didn't seem worried about marking a lower number for an item.  Looking at his overall score, he rated a 3.4 which is in the medium range.  More interesting to me, however, were his subcategory scores.  His highest was in Problem Solving Strategies (4.5) and reviewing the examples of these strategies, I definitely see things that I observe him doing when he reads.  His lowest score was in Support Reading Strategies ( 2.2).  Many of these are more advanced strategies that he hasn't really had the opportunity to use as a second grade student.  However, I think they are definitely strategies that he will need to employ next year and now would be a great time to begin introducing some of them such as taking notes and asking self-questions.  Overall, this was a very interesting inventory.

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Jackie
I gave the Level 4 Silent Reading Comprehension to my 2nd grade son.  First, my thoughts about the assessment were that it was very similar to the retelling portion of the DRA which I've used in the past.  The assessment gives prompts to draw information out of students that they do not initially give in their retelling.  Giving this to Henry, I noticed that he was able to retell the majority of the literal information from the story on his own (unaided).  He needed the prompt to get to some of the other elements (evaluative/language, characterization).  Overall, I think he gave a really complete retelling.

Response to Jackie

That is great that your son was able to retell the level 4 text so well! Finding the theme is such a hard concept. Like you said, students often only identify literal information.

Alicia

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Jackie
Reviewing the Developmental Retelling Model, one thing that really stood out to me was the prerequisite of "pretelling." I am wondering if this refers to games and puzzles that require children to sequence an event (such as building a snowman) by picture?  This is an activity that both of my children did at preschool.

What I noticed the most about the teaching process for retelling was the very clear, "I do, we do, you do" model.  I think that model works amazingly well for almost any strategy instruction and it looks like it's recommended for retelling, as well.  :-)

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This flowchart is a great illustration for the processes of teaching retelling. Teacher modeling is an important part of the process. Thinking aloud during reading is key for modeling even the most basic comprehension strategies.

Written retelling is a necessary skill for my 4th grade readers on the DRA assessment. Many students struggle determining important vs. unimportant details when retelling. ANother area of struggle is identifying the theme and central idea. The deficit in these two areas cause students to sometimes miss "the big picture" when retelling a story.

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A great strategy to apply with reading complex content text. I have been using pretelling with students to help them with making connections of what they know and what they think our reading is going to be about.

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This flow chart was really nice because it show the two different processes for retelling for comprehension and teaching it. In Kindergarten, there is constant modeling. We do a lot of shared reading, guided reading, and modeling before students can be more independent on retelling. My students are working on labeling and drawing a detailed picture to retell. I also assess them when they are orally retelling me something. This is a great model that I plan to look at and use to remind myself of the processes.

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The following diagram shows how retelling can be gradually released and eventually into student writing. Study the model and comment on what you notice about it. What questions come to mind? These will be a good starting place for our work next week.

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Investigate the oral retelling instruments in the Moodle folder.

Begin by reading the protocol directions.

Give the Oral Retelling assessment to at least one student. Write about your findings about the student and your thoughts about the assessment on a sticky note on the paddlet.

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Download the MAI and the MARSI from Moodle.  Read through each carefully.

The MAI is an instrument used for students to rate their metacognitive awareness on many tasks - not just reading.  Answers can be divided to understand the function of different types of activities
in order to understand strengths or areas of challenge.

The MARSI is somewhat similar, but looks at metacognition in the context of reading.

Your task:  give the MAI or the MARSI to one of your students (if appropriate) or to a student of a different grade (if needed).  Write a note and place it on the padlet about what you did and how it went.  What were you able to figure out from the assessment?

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Assessing students' comprehension is tricky.  Metacognitive self inventories and students' retelling of texts can provide important means of illuminating what students understand of a particular text.  This week we are going to look at two metacognitive inventories and an assessment for retelling.

Next week, we are going to learn more about retelling and how it supports students' learning. We will also explore the instructional parts of the two caps.