Five-finger retell and Clicker
We recently published some new Clicker Sets on LearningGrids to support the five-finger retell method. These simple resources help develop important literacy skills and highlight the versatility of Clicker to meet a range of classroom and student needs.
Let’s have a look at:
- What the five-finger method is
- How the five-finger retell sets combine with other LearningGrids resources to support literacy
- How Clicker’s flexibility enhances these sets
What is a five-finger retell?
The five-finger retell method is a technique that provides a visual (and physical) element to help students summarize the key parts of a story. Each finger of the hand represents a different story component. The technique, and our Clicker Sets, can develop students’ retelling skills and assess their comprehension of a story.
The technique is often used as an oral activity where the teacher and students use their hand to go through the main parts of a story. Many teachers also encourage this to be a written activity as well.
How can you use the Clicker Sets?
To introduce the five-finger retell concept to students, it works best to use a familiar story, such as a simple fairy tale. On LearningGrids we have a range of Clicker Traditional Tales and these work perfectly for introducing this retell method.
The class can read a Clicker Book, such as Jack and the Beanstalk, all together or in small groups. Then the teacher can go back through the story, drawing students’ attention to the different story elements and using their hand as a prompt. The teacher can then use the Clicker Board to record the groups’ responses – the visual on the board, as well as the headings, reinforce the different story elements again.
After students have become familiar with the method, the idea is to give students a chance to try it for themselves with another story. Go back to LearningGrids for a different Clicker traditional story, or explore other collections in our Story Corner, such as the Book Dash titles, the Planet Wobble series, or even the Myths & Legends for slightly older students. The books could be read together and students could then do a retell on their own.
The Clicker Sets that we created provide different options to match the needs and abilities of students. As encouraged in universal design for learning, we offer multiple forms of expression for students. For some students, such as emergent or early writers, it might be more appropriate for them to use the Talk Set to do the retell.
For other students, more independent writers, they could use the Word Bank with sentence starters. Or they could use the Clicker Board – you could even print out the Clicker Board to do the activity away from the computer if that was needed.
How does Clicker’s flexibility further benefit students’ learning?
Some students may need more support than just the sentence starters when they are using the five-finger retell Word Bank. They could easily turn on word prediction to help them with spelling as they are writing. They would also benefit from having access to banks of story- specific key words. For all of the Clicker Traditional Stories and most of the other books in the Story Corner, we provide Word Banks to help students write about those stories.
For instance, you might want to use the Goldilocks and the Three Bears - Quick Words set alongside the five-finger retell sentence starters. Combing grids from both sets gives easy access to students while they are writing their retell.
As with all resources on LearningGrids, the five-finger retell sets are adaptable to match your needs. For example, some educators use different headings for the five key parts of the story - instead of beginning/middle/end, some use beginning/problem/solution. It is quick and easy to change the headings on the Clicker Board or the starters in the Word Bank.
Once students are familiar with the main parts of a story, they can use the resources to plan their stories – so instead of five-finger retell, they could become five-finger story planners.
Be sure to visit LearningGrids for other retell Clicker Sets. Here are some other resources that you might find helpful:
- Early elementary writing with Clicker blog post
- Early reading support with Clicker blog post
