Should I be worried? ..and if so what about!

[whatsitallabout1]

Sorry in advance for essay!

....DS is yr 1, he picked up phonics very well and is now a great reader. He has been on green band since last Autumn and has read the books sent home 100% perfectly with great expression etc for some months. I really didn't want to be one of those parents but eventually asked the teacher what we should be working on. She explained that during guided reading sessions he was not demonstrating an ability to "retell" the story. She didn't give us any advice on how to work on this so we made it up ourselves and have started asking him to retell story, do little series of pictures to show what happened etc.

I do agree that he finds it hard to retell the story - he can't seem to identify what are the key bits of the story in words (but can in pictures). Comprehension seems fine in response to direct questions. Any ideas how we can help him?

To avoid drip feeding, he does suffer on and off with reduced hearing due to glue ear, but it's not considered bad enough for treatment. All the other dc in his guided reading group are 6 months to 18 months older (mixed yr 1&2 class) so I think shyness might be an issue also as he is less mature than the others. In maths he is very able with the concepts and can patently do the sums but will still pretty much always reverse numbers more often than not, if you ask him what it says he is always spot on.

Is this just a maturity thing? Surely we'll run out of green books eventually?!
I have parents evening next week - help!

Try and find library books that are more demanding, for him, including non-fiction.

When reading harder books with him, get him to point to words as he goes along. If he knows the word, or can sound it out, he can say it. If he doesn't know the word, he can hover his finger over it, and YOU say the word for him. Don't stop to analyse or discuss the word at this stage, but try and keep the 'flow' of reading going. Review difficulties at the end, if you wish to.

This way, he has the satisfaction of reading more difficult books, without the fear of getting 'stuck' on words.

Thanks Ferguson, I have a bit of a Book People obsession and he has access to loads of books at home and loves reading, very rarely gets stuck on a word even with much more difficult texts and reads very fluently. However he does seem unable to really re-tell the story after reading any story - just can't seem to find the words, it doesn't seem to be a comprehension issue. Other than keep getting him to try retelling it without much success I'm not sure what to try!

This is a fairly common stagecoach learning to read, where they've got the hang of the actual words, and their individual meanings but struggle to take them in enough to really understand what's going on in the story. Staying at the same level for a while gives them the chance to get more confident on the words - not having to sound them out each time allows them to focus on taking in the story and information in the book. You can do some more varied questioning, what was their favourite bit, why did character X do Y, what happened after Y etc if just asking DC to retell is getting boring.

No need to worry though, it's a really common plateau, which you and DC will likely come across again once they move onto more difficult books :)

Start with him retelling simpler stories or what happened in a paragraph or a nursery rhyme?

If you have a tape recorder, or a phone he can use to record, see if he can either make up his own little story and dictate it as a recording, or re-tell a well known story, like Three Little Pigs, Jack and the Beanstalk, or something more modern like Shrek.

Then see if he can write any of it from his dictated version. You mentioned 'pictures': often in schools, they use a 'storyboard' approach to making up a story or essay, such as are used when planning scenes in a film. See if he can illustrate any of the scenes from a book he has read.

Have you tried guiding him by asking, for example "What was the first thing that happened?" "And what happened next?"

Can he retell a story that you have read to him?

Ferguson's suggestion sounds like an engaging way to engage him!

Also, you might try and get him to act out a story as a play, once in a while. the whole family can join in! this helps him to enjoy the story-telling aspect of recounting a story and engaging all his imagination and what he thinks is going on in a story by moving about, saying lines, dressing up.

He's still really little. And it sounds like his reading is coming along fine! Each skill just takes some time to develop.