Literature Review: Conclusion   

     Repeated readings and story retellings allow students to become more aware of stories and more familiar with the structure of the stories (Oja, 1996).  Therefore, a practical application of repeated readings includes the use of stories for enrichment and enjoyment by way of a theme-based approach so connections can be made and children can be involved from the beginning. Extended understandings and interpretations come through the discussions about stories. This interactive process is what gives story reading its powerful influence on young children. Repeated readings lend themselves naturally to story retelling and dramatic reenactments.  Dramatization is a powerful medium for constructing interpretations of favorite stories. Dramatic story retellings and reenactments consist of activities such as puppetry, story acting, lap stories, flannel boards, acetate stories and readers theatre (Cunningham & Moore, 2000).  

     Story retellings and reenactments are very important in literacy development as they give children the opportunity to establish and practice powerful strategies that they will use later on in mature readings. An important benefit includes its ability to adapt to the proficiency level of the child and its relevance as it builds upon prior knowledge and experiences. Unfortunately, retelling has not been a common practice in schools partly because it is time consuming and deemed difficult for children.  Nevertheless, it can be implemented as a practical technique for classroom use. Children can retell in a group or older children can retell to younger children.  Students can be provided with the book or props to aid in their retelling.  Story experiences can be enhanced through the use of visuals including puppets, slides, posters, flannel board pieces, and stuffed animals. Children begin by simply chanting chorus parts of stories during the readings. For example during The Gingerbread Man the children would chant, “Run, run as fast as you can, you can't catch me I'm the Gingerbread Man”. Or while reading The Three Billy Goats Gruff they would all chime in on, “Who's that trip-trapping over my bridge…..I am going to eat you up….be off with you”.  Next, they move towards retelling parts or the whole story as they become more familiar with it (Machado, 1999; Morrow, 1996; Bellon, & Ogletree, 2000; & Early Childhood Language Arts 1992). “During retellings, teachers encourage children by prompting responses through scaffolding or modeling, asking questions, informing, and offering support for children's comments” (Morrow, 1996). Scaffolding decreases as the shift moves from teacher/peer reading and modeling to child retelling independently (King-DeBaun, 1999).

     When young children “read” to adults the child is telling the story as he/she remembers it in his/her own words. Their use of complex language to talk about the story suggests an understanding of the various relationships and perspectives that create the narrative structure of the story. Semantic Complexity refers to the concrete and abstract nature in the meaning of language and includes indicating, labeling, description, interpretation, inference and meta-language. These levels build upon each other. As semantic complexity emerges, a natural result is the use of more complex linguistic structures.  This can be enhanced through repeated readings and story retellings because children will have more experience hearing the language of the story. This carries over to become part of their permanent knowledge base to draw upon during future readings (Bellon & Ogletree, 2000). 

     Research has shown that some syntactic forms, such as adverbs greatly increase in frequency (conversationally and it writings) over the elementary school years. Many storybooks involve the use of these forms and can be assessed by retellings. Sutter and Johnson (1995) investigated the rate at which 60 elementary school children produced three advanced verb forms- past progressive, past perfect progressive, and past perfect when asked to retell literate narratives. They found that older children performed significantly better and borrowed more advanced verb forms when retelling the story segments. This research shows that children do borrow forms, and the ability to do so increases with age.     

    “Story retelling can be used to measure a child's comprehension of a story”  (Morrow 1996). Retellings can reveal a child's sense of story structure and their literal recall.  They also reveal a child's ability to make inferences as they organize, integrate, and classify information that is not expressed in the story. They may also generalize, interpret feelings, or relate ideas not expressed in the story (Irwin & Mitchell, 1983).   Several Qualitative assessment scales exist for story retelling assessment.  Irwin and Mitchell (1983) developed a 5- point retelling scale to assess comprehension based on the richness of student's retellings. Morrow, (1993) developed two Retelling Scales. The first is a story retelling analysis for sense of story structure to be used by the teacher, and the second is a student oral or written retelling evaluation form. These are 10- point scale that assesses a student's ability to include setting, theme, plot episodes, resolution and sequencing elements in their retellings. The student form also includes a section to comment on areas of improvement. Additionally, retelling is a component of the Qualitative Reading Inventory-3 (QRI-3 Leslie & Caldwell). Responses are recorded on a Retelling Scoring sheet that contains idea units from the story.  The ideas units are broken up into the following categories: Setting/Background, Goal, Events, and Resolution. Each Grade level has its own story and idea units based on the story.

      Repeated storybook reading and story retelling together provide an exemplary approach to teaching, assessing and facilitating many aspects of literacy development. Numerous journal articles cited agree that for repeated reading and retelling, books should be predictable and have text that repeats. Several research studies presented also support the use of expository text as well as storybooks for repeated reading and retelling. By employing these two methods with a variety of genres, students of all ability levels will receive the academic and emotional support they need while learning to become independent readers.

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