First grade students recently learned a strategy for organizing story details called the “5 Finger Retell”. With this strategy, each finger on one hand represents a story element. The thumb represents characters, the pointer finger represents the setting and the middle, ring and pinky fingers represent the beginning, middle and end of the plot.
We talked about this strategy as a class and then each student got a chance to make their own 5 Finger Retell poster to hang up in our classroom. We traced our hands and then labeled each finger, while discussing what each story element means.
Later in the day, we read the story Dog Breath by Dav Pilkey. It’s such a hilarious book! Students reflected on the book and then helped create an anchor chart using the 5 Finger Retell strategy to organize the story elements from Dog Breath. In the future, we will continue using this strategy to help us identify and organize story elements.