Teaching Ideas and Units - Teaching Strategies

Retelling

Speaking and Listening, Reading and Viewing, Writing
Bands A, B, C, D

What is it?

This is sometimes called Read and Retell. It involves students reading, viewing or hearing a text and then retelling it, using any of the language modes. The approach described here was developed by Brian Cambourne and Hazel Brown, trialled by a state-wide research team of Tasmanian teachers, and endorsed by the Department of Education as a highly recommended strategy for teaching and assessment in the late 1980s.

What is its purpose?

This strategy concentrates on interpretation of the content and the structure of the particular text. Because it can involve all of the language modes, retelling can be used to teach and to assess a wide range of students' skills and understandings.

How do I do it?

Before students are asked to do a retelling, they need to have been immersed in the particular text genre so that they are familiar with its structures and features.

1. The teacher shows the title of a text to students and asks them to predict words/ideas that the title suggests.
2. In small groups, students share their predictions and comment on each other's suggestions.
3. Students are then presented with the text that they hear, read or view.
4. Students are given explicit instructions about what is expected of them when retelling. For example, to retell an explanatory text so that someone else can understand how to program a video recorder.
5. Without referring to the original text, students retell it in the particular language mode that they have been asked to use.
6. In groups, students then share their retellings, comparing additions, omissions, differences in vocabulary and phrasing.
7. Students share some of their discussions, commenting on their appropriateness and similarity to the original text.

How can I adapt it?

The texts that are used for retelling can be written, visual or oral. Retellings can also be in any of these forms. So, for example, a written text can be retold in a visual form, orally or as another written text. Teachers can read the text as students follow, using their own copies. Alternatively, teachers can listen while the teacher reads aloud, or read the text silently.

How can it be used to evaluate students' language learning?

Depending on the purposes for the retelling, a range of things can be evaluated. During the retelling, students' speaking and listening skills can be assessed through discussions and conferences. After the task has been completed, the students' texts can be analysed for, for example, content and structure.

Where can I find out more?

Assessing As You Go: Primary English (1997). Curriculum Corporation, Melbourne. Brown, H. & Cambourne, B.(1998). Read and Retell, Nelson, Melbourne.
Cambourne, B., 'Retelling: a whole-language, natural learning activity for helping learner-writers' in Walshe, R. D., March, P. & Jenson, D. (eds), (1998)Writing and learning in Australia, Dellasta Books in association with Oxford University Press, Melbourne,.
Frew, J., Jatan, H. & Morris, S., (1989) Retelling, Tasmanian Education Department.
Hancock, J., & Leaver, C., (1994) Major Teaching Strategies for English, Australian Reading Association, Victoria.