Fun Ways to Work on Story Recall in Speech Therapy

Want your speech students to retell a story in their own words but want it more exciting than just expressing it?

One goal many of our students have is to retell a story in their own words. It can be challenging for them. They need to comprehend the story, recall the order of events, and know how to verbally express it. They might struggle using transition or sequencing vocabulary.   They might have a weak memory. They must have trouble organizing all of their ideas into a cohesive response. There are many reasons they might struggle but we can help them overcome it!   We can also make it fun and interactive at the same time! Who just wants to write summaries all the time? Who wants to just verbally spit back sequences of events? That can get boring! I will share some of my favorite ways to work on story recall with you!

 

Using Texting Story or iFakeTextMessage to retell a story!

Using technology is a great way to make story retell fun and engaging. Using the free app Texting Story or the free website iFakeTextMessage are great ways for students to create their own dialogue about the story. They can pretend to tell a friend about the story they just read or heard. They can still use any strategy you teach them like note-taking strategies or using visual aids to guide them. Can they summarize in their own words? Can they only include relevant details? Give them a limit on how many “texts” they can send! Learn more about using these apps in speech therapy by CLICKING HERE.

Using Props to Retell a Story

Props are fun. They bring a story to life. You can easily use items found around your home or therapy room or create them cheap (yes you can always buy felt pieces or items from various retail stores or Etsy as well). Is the story about farm animals? Grab some farm animals from your toy farm. Grab a Barbie doll and let her be the main character. Be creative. Let students use various toys and items to retell the story in their own words.

 

Color Copies of Photos from the Book

Want to do something more than just make Boardmaker or symbols to represent the story? You can go to Staples or anywhere that has a color copy machine and makes some copies of the items right from the story. Use them as props or visual aids and let students retell stories with them. Let them put them in the right order. My favorite books to use this idea with are the books from Shirley Nietzel! Her illustrations are just awesome!

 

Doodle Their Own Versions of the Story

Students hate writing? Does writing takes too long because they keep struggling with spelling? Want to just change things up and keep students motivated? Let them doodle the story! You can give them pieces of paper and let them draw pictures to represent parts of the story. You can also use fun apps like Doodle Buddy or a free websites called Doodle Splash. Drawing is fun and lets them be creative! You can even use large poster paper and let them make graffiti containing relevant details of the story and use their drawings to tell summaries or recall the details to answer questions.

 

Using PicCollage To Retell A Story

This free app can be so much fun.  Just take pictures of significant events in a story.  The app will automatically jumble the order of the pictures if you do “freestyle” collage.  Students can then rearrange them, put them in the correct order, and then use the pictures to tell you the story in their own words!  It is a fun way to incorporate technology and use that iPad!  CLICK HERE to learn more about this idea and other ways you can use this free app in speech therapy!

As you can see there are various other options other than writing using graphic organizers that can be used to help students work on recalling and retelling stories in their own words. Bring stories to life and students will love reading and working on this tricky skill!

SaveSave