Winter Wonders Blog Hop from Adventures in Literacy Land

I'm so excited to be a part of this amazing group of women. I'm even more excited to be a part of the 1st year birthday bash! Congrats guys, I'd say you've had a very successful year!

So this is my official start of my journey with Adventures in Literacy Land, I can't believe it! This is such a great way to start off 2015!

If your a follower of my blog and your haven't yet had the chance to meet these extraordinary literacy ladies you should definitely hit that follow button as you hop through and be sure and follow Adventure in Literacy Land at the end.

If your new to my blog leave a comment below I would love to get to know you. Now on to the best part. Its time for me to share with you a little something I've been working on this year plus I have a little freebie for you.

Using Retelling Cards as a Formative Assessment to Target Instruction

I've been studying using formative assessment to to better target my instruction. If you're interested in learning more about the formative assessment action plans you can go here. As a K-6 Literacy Interventionist I've been practicing this across all elementary grade levels. However, today I'm going to share with you how you can use use retelling cards as a formative assessment tool and how you can apply the information you glean from said formative assessment to target further learning. This particular product will work well with grade K-1 kiddos or for grade 2-3 intervention kiddos.

You can download the freebie below first if you'd like, I will be referring to it as I go. Like all intentional teaching plans, I will start with the teacher objectives.

Okay so we have our purpose for teaching this particular skill, now we need to make the purpose meaningful for our kiddos.

Notice I wrote possible "I Can Statements". This is because you know your students far better then I do and you should create statements that work for you and your class. 

Next, I listed just a few "feed-up" ideas. There are many more I just wanted to get the ball rolling. I like asking questions because it brings their prior knowledge to the forefront and they buy in more. They now have clearer expectations of the purpose for this activity. 

I also included think-pair-share which included recalling what they remembered from hearing the story previously and discussing it with a partner. I included this because I often read a story that we are going to be using as a mentor text daily. The first time I read it I just want them to enjoy it and make some connections. I will do some "thinking out loud" statements but they are brief . I try not to interrupt the flow of the story. The think-pair-share activity would come later. 

The mentor text that these retelling cards correlate with is:

Now it's time to let them work in groups to practice what  they've learned. You get to walk around and witness the magic. And of course, offer feedback as needed. 

And last but certainly not least we get to Feed-forward. Or create a targeted instructional plan(you)/target learning goals(students).  First we need to look at our objectives and I can statements and remember the purpose of this activity is to assist in the learning of retelling. Before we begin our needs assessment we need to remember this is not just about retelling. This is about using retelling to help us understand a (in this case) fiction text. 

With that in mind, what do your students need to reach their learning target. 

I'm getting a little long winded so I will wrap it up here. Feel free to download my freebie! And please follow along if you would like to learn more about the formative assessment action plan! 

Thanks for stopping by!

Now it's time to "skate" on over to Jennifer's @ Stories and Songs in Second!