Have you seen the oral cloze retell idea by Eric Herman on my TCI/TPRS activities page which is found on my homepage up the top in the header?

Here it is:

On subsequent retells you can erase more and more words to give more advanced students a greater challenge and eventually erase the entire story and have superstars retell the entire story without any written support.

Example:

There is a boy. His name is Bob. He likes pizza.

There is ___ boy. His name __ Bob. He likes _____.

There __ ___ boy. ___ name __ Bob. He ____ ____.

There __ ___ ___. ___ name __ Bob. __ ____ _____.

 

I tried it today with a year 1/2 class as well as a reception class and it was awesome!

I began by asking 2 students to act out the story while I retold it. By now, I’ve lost count of the number of times they have heard it, but it never hurts to get in one more retell!! I then dragged over my mobile white board and asked the class to tell me the story again. It was brilliant how well they could retell the story! I wrote down the first 5 sentences on the board.

Buarlapar.

Buaya lihat Elsa.

Buaya mau makan Elsa.

Elsa berlari ke Horseshoe Bay.

We all then read the story together using hand gestures. At the end of the first reading, I rubbed out one word and in its place I drew a contrasting coloured line. We then read through it again together, however before we all read it, I explained that the next person to rub out a word would be someone who is both reading and gesturing beautifully. Boy – that ramped up the participation and engagement!!

We continued this until there was nothing left of the story and all that was there were red lines where the words used to be!! Both classes absolutely loved it and were so fluent by the time we rubbed out the last word!