Spookley Story Retelling

One of our goals in kindergarten is to have each student be able to retell a story using these five areas:
*What is the setting?
*Who are the characters?
*What happening in the beginning/middle/end of the story?
*What was the problem in the story?
*What was the solution?
(RL.K.2 and RL.K.3)

This week, we read the book Spookley the Square Pumpkin by Joe Troiano. We discussed the story using our above questions. The students worked together in small groups on one of the above areas of story retelling. Right now, we're focusing on characters, setting, problem and solution.

The students worked together to draw pictures for their part of the story retelling.

We talked about adding the right type of details to their drawings - like making sure they only added the farm, scarecrow and pumpkin patch to the setting drawing.

The groups worked really well together to create their drawings.

The characters were...the farmer, Spookley and the pumpkins.

The setting was the farm.

The problem in the story was that there was a storm that blew a hole in the fence and the pumpkins were rolling out into the sea!

But in the end (or the solution to the story), Spookley the Square Pumpkin saved the day by plugging up the whole in the fence. The farmer was so impressed by Spookley's square shape saving the day, he planted seeds the next year that turned out to be all different shapes, sizes and colors!