Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy reluctance to retell?

Hi! I apologize up front for the long post.

DS (1st grade, just turned 7) only gets 1 homework assignment per night - reading a 'baggie book' given by the school and then, the next day, reading a short passage from the text to check for fluency and then doing a retell for the teacher to check for comprehension. (His school uses DRA). We were told the baggie books would always be a level or 2 below their level, and he's bringing level 24 books home now. DS LOVES to read. Reading the baggie books is not an issue - he does it willingly, even though he's not thrilled at having to read each one 2 times (the school says they want 3 times, but we let him read to self once and read aloud once). And when he's done reading his baggie book he gets out his own books for pleasure - and they are definitely above the level 24 of the baggie book.

The issue comes when we ask him to do the retell (for the baggie books or his personal choice books). He hems and haws and stalls and throws tantrums and does everything in his power not to do it. In my experience, he understands what he's read, and if he's asked questions about it, he can answer them very accurately. But for some reason putting the pieces together on his own seems to be a big challenge. If he's pressed hard, he can do it, very reluctantly, using vocab direct from the reading and with good detail. But at school they can't/won't press him that hard to do it. They write notes telling me it's OK to take more than 1 day to read a book, and this past week sent home a writing summary page and he was only allowed to do one chapter per day and had to do a written summary of each chapter. But that didn't seem to help matters - even with only 1 chapter (and a chapter of Young Cam Jansen isn't very long, maybe 3-4 pages) he still acted like we were killing him any time we wanted him to do a retell. At school they say he needs numerous prompts (what happened next? then what? etc) and that lowers his grade for the book. It's the same way at home - once he starts he'll summarize then stop. Then I need to prompt him, and he'll continue briefly and then stop. And we continue this way until the end of the book.

So I'm at a loss - am I pressing him too hard or having too high expectations? I personally feel there is no good reason that he should have to take a whole week to read through one of these books by doing one chapter per night, but he's not doing a satisfactory job of summarizing for the teachers. Could there be some underlying issue that we or the school are overlooking? Has anyone else had a similar experience with their DC that they would share?

Thanks for the advice!

Could it be an interest thing? DD loves to read and while I do have her narrate to me some, I have found that if she is really into the book she talks about it without any prompting, to the point that she will come running to me to tell me all about it. I have found this with the Roald Dahl books and the How to Train Your Dragon books and the Narnia series especially. She will go on and on and excitedly tell me everything even when she is interrupting me in the middle of something else. On the other hand, if she's not into it,say a book that I have assigned for school that she is okay with but not in love with, she totally comprehends it, but it takes lots of questions and prompting to find out what happens. So maybe he just isn't that into the books that they are asking him to read, either not his thing or way to below his level, and so having to talk about it is frankly boring. Just my thoughts. Good luck.

When my dd started school they gave her readers well below her reading level and told me they wouldn't move her ahead because she couldn't demonstrate that she could comprehend them. I was astonished because it was very apparent that she had great comprehension of books that were significantly more complex than the ones they were asking her to read. Eventually it dawned on me that she couldn't tell them what happened because she had switched off while she was reading because they were so unengaging. Her mind was off doing other things and so while the words were coming out, she wasn't paying any attention to them.

Dd has never been one who likes to show what she knows, so even books she loves she is reluctant to tell us about if we ask her directly, but like amazedmom's daughter, she'll chatter about them non-stop and incorporate them in to other parts of her life so you get a real sense of her level of understanding. She has had a teacher this year who has had fun with this and has been creative in getting dd to show what she understands, plus she's had some success in pushing dd because dd knows this teacher 'sees' her - but it's the first time a teacher has been prepared to listen to us and to make the effort.

I don't really have any answers (other than ... erm .... populating schools with fabulous, creative teachers ... ) just thought I'd let you know you're not alone!

I have such strong negative memories associated with basically people telling me I was untrustworthy and a liar. I took being honest fairly seriously and found it very disturbing. And now, of course, I understand the intent, but me then found things like having to retell a story or show math work being the same as being called a liar, repeatedly.

To be honest my DS (also gr 1) would think it a complete insult to have to read a book twice, then re-tell it again. I suspect he wouldn't do it either. His teacher currently has him reading an online book every night then doing the 10 on-line questions afterwards- which range from re-telling to vocab definition to inferring comprehension. DS is quite happy to do these as they are quick to do. It does make a difference if the books are exciting as he will happily chat about those but the typical school readers are not exciting at all.
Tricky...especially when he has to demonstrate competence...

I have also had this problem with my ds in k. I think the problem is the teacher- really. As another poster said if the books are too easy and boring, why would he want to read and re tell? Could he be allowed to pick a book of his own choice and re tell that? It really drives me crazy that teachers try to make our kids fit in a mold that they don't belong!

You might want to look at the book "Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It."

Ds5 very much does/did this. So when we would read books together, I'd ask what happened at the end of each chapter, and one sentence would be good enough. With shorter/simpler books he struggled more, as often not much really happens in them. Now that he reads long chapter books on his own, he does book reports on each one (typed- and his own idea at first). I feel happy to get one to three sentences. At first I had him take online multiple choice tests to really test his comprehension. I was worried he wasn't reading because he read so fast. But he always aced the quiz. So I agree with Portia, retell and recall are two separate skills, and both need to be developed. Just keep at it slowly and model how it should be done. We sometimes read a book he already read, then give him our book report on it. Or if he is struggling...don't feel like it is cheating to read a book with him then summarize the book for him. Skills like this need to be modeled before they can be learned. If he has never heard a synopsis of a book before, he hasn't seen how to pull out the key pieces.

In the early grades this would have caused my DS14 exactly the same problem. My son would have refused to even read the book a second time. Luckily he didn't had to do this at this grade. He took online assessments that he did quite well with. I suspect you need to sit down with the teacher and see if there is some other way this can be handled than orally. While there is something important is learning how to give information verbally, this can for many children be a problem. And the teachers are confusing two skills, reading comprehension with oral skills.

In grades 4-6 (in a gifted class) my son was expected to do "oral" book reviews 6 times a year. (to a volunteer parent) He had a chance to prepare them. The first year these were quite a challenge for him. But this wasn't the main method of assessing his reading. And more an exercise to encourage more fun reading and practice his oral skills.

Good Luck.

P.S. Edited to add. My DD14 has always had problems "telling" or writing when he has nothing to say. First day of his gifted 4th grade class, teacher asked the kids to write to a prompt. He wrote one sentence. He had nothing to say. Teacher was very concerned because everyone else wrote pages. It took a lot of work and some maturity to get over that hump.

DRA retelling should follow a script of naming the characters, the setting, the situation, the resolution, and the moral. I gave DS the script, first as a series of 8-9 questions for him to answer to me in order that I'd written out for him, and then we eventually faded the paper list of questions to him retelling it without a piece of paper.

Edit: My point is that the DRA assumes that a child knows how to retell a story with a few vague "tell me more" prompts from the teacher. Retelling in the style demanded by the DRA is not an obvious skill for a lot of kids. Teachers tend to interpret the inability to retell as lack of comprehension instead of not knowing the script. If you don't naturally discover the script, the "tell me more" prompts are frustration and infuriating, and they just make the process torture. I had to give my child the script.

My DD has always detested retelling--even just about her day. She gets stressed about telling it all in perfect order or missing parts. I think she feels very put on the spot. I'm glad to see the advice about specific questions and how we could help scaffold it for her.

We had a very similar problem in K this year, and it was keeping my son from moving up in reading levels. The books they were sending home were level one readers, and at home my son reads middle school/high school level science books, and beginner chapter books. He was becoming incredibly frustrated, as he wasn't progressing in school, and found the books to be incredibly boring. After much discussion with him, I set up a meeting with the reading teacher and his classroom teacher to discuss the situation. They informed me that although he had excellent "decoding" skills, he wasn't comprehending the books. I knew this wasn't the case, as he frequently tells me in detail about things he has learned from reading his science books, and he loves to tell me about the books he chooses. I asked to see the evaluation sheet so that I could see what it was they wanted him to do, and it turned out they wanted an extremely detailed retell. He was basically supposed to retell every page of the book, or almost every detail. However, they had never told him that, as the reading specialist only works with kids who are behind or at grade level, but not ahead. As far as they were concerned, they didn't care if he moved up in reading at all this year, as he was already where he needed to be for K.

However, the whole situation was starting to make him very anxious, as he just couldn't understand why they kept saying he didn't have good comprehension skills, and really didn't comprehend why he was the only one in the class not changing levels. It really mattered a lot to him.

He and I had a long talk after my meeting, in which he told me he wasn't paying attention while reading those stories because they were "so boring." I explained that he had to prove he could do it, in order to the get higher level books that he wanted, and that he had to pay attention to the story even if it was something he was not at all interested in reading. And then we practiced every night - he would retell the story in incredible detail, and I let him use the book if needed. When they tested him two weeks later (much earlier than they had told me he would be retested) he passed with flying colors.

Thanks so much for the advice and insight everyone. I'll have to find the script they're looking for and we'll go from there.

We have a meeting on Friday morning because we didn't sign off agreeing that Ds' needs were being met in the regular classroom, so wish us luck!

Both of my boys struggled with this. We found that using a template worked wonders. I did a quick search and found this site that has several very nice templates you can print for free. When your kiddo only has to fill in the blanks, you may find the resistance goes down.

http://www.thatresourcesite.com/book_resources_blank_book_reports.htm