Stories often create a good time for young learners. These not only entertain them but also offer valuable insights as part of the narration. While kids understand the story while it is narrated, some crucial details need to be implanted to ensure the story makes an impact. Retelling is a great idea in this context as pupils are often made closer to anecdotes with some questions or inferences.
While these practices can be applied in the classroom as well, online games add up to visual inference and engagement. With all these insights, here we listed out some easy-to-access retelling games for your kids which make stories further memorable.
Making retelling fun- Online games are the way!
Retelling stories or enacting a scene of a story through the help of games can be a common practice for developing kids. As players, students can take the help of instructors to create a valuable retelling session. Accordingly here are some edges and reasons for opting for these games:
- There are multiple approaches to retelling, but those with picture prompts can have a better effect- which online games can ensure. In research[1] conducted by Ana Carolina Sella et.al. eleven first graders were chosen and encouraged to indulge in story retelling in multiple ways. It is seen that visual prompts were a comparatively better effect on them. This way, online games can be a good choice for retelling.
- Games play an interesting role in remembering classic tales with discipline in a personalized style. With interaction, they ensure a multisensory session of proper narratives- which is often important along with ensuring the essence.
- These sessions come up with challenges that the player needs to resolve. This way, they ensure a sequential approach to learning tale better.
- Retelling is an alternative method to evaluate the language and perception of the pupil. Edge is that it is often a better engaging option. In research[2] made by Sarah M. Pickert, the multiple ways a teacher can evaluate the language of the pupil are analyzed. They observed: that one way is by directly asking them some questions, and the other one is retelling. While it is the call of the teacher to choose one among these techniques, Retelling can be an interesting activity to opt for.
- Even before a question and answer session of a tale or a concept, having a retelling exercise makes the little ones ensure attention to minor details in it. This fills out several gaps that some pupils may face personally.
Retelling games for kids- Our suggestions
These are some of the online games that can create interest in children in retelling a reading comprehension or a story from a book.
1. Adventure
This game welcomes the users with three books to choose from Pretty, Princess, Wondergirl, and Becky Botsford. These three books come with distinct stories and genres to provide a unique experience with each of them.
Choosing a book, players are taken to a new screen where they can see a virtual book. The users can open it, turn pages and finish it just like any other book. The added cues here include the audio narration of the story. Also, there is a blank space for users to fill up on each page, they can look around the setting to answer.
At the end of the narrations, important postulates are highlighted, letting the pupil retain all of these. Now, they can turn over pages again to retell it again. With good visuals and engaging narrative, students can prefer it take advantage of multiple books on the same game.
2. Molly’s Magic Adventure
This game is not to win or lose, but rather to get the user to get involved in the story. Set up in a beautiful forest, this game is all about a unicorn named Molly. It dreams to see a beautiful rainbow, and the player needs to guide it toward the destination.
As the game starts users come across a question about what path should Molly choose to start: Flower Field or Magic Forest. Choosing one will take it forward. Similarly, players need to answer multiple questions on the way to Molly. These multiple scenes of the story are retained implicitly.
With this game, the students can first create their own story with a set of choices. Later replaying this game, they can make it a retelling session. This option is filled with many interesting and colorful objects like boards, mirrors, fruits, and flowers- making it a great natural inspiring recreation for kids.
3. Lilly Pad Pond
Looking for an underwater story of a cure creature, this story satisfies your gut with a narration of a cure toad. This lively animated storybook game revolves around a couple of tadpoles- Tilly and Polly. These friends are excited to make new adventures and on this journey, they notice many interesting things in their life.
To start with, players have two options:
- Read to me: Opting this option, players can let an audio cue of the story narration. They need to start with this option to listen to what the story goes like. After completing the story, they need to restart it for retelling
- Read it to Myself: Once the story is traversed through, users now choose this option to just get visual prompts assisting them to recall what they comprehended.
Initially, the game ameliorates listening skills and visual learning in little ones. Later, when they go through the story again, they can get scope for retelling it effortlessly.
4. Rebus: Reading Comprehension
The game starts with a blue monster welcoming the player. Soon, it begins to narrate a short story with multiple locations or scenes in it. The user needs to listen to it carefully, as there is a retelling session following it.
Later, the host asks simple questions about various scenes or may ask students to sequence the location cards according to the story. Often, there is no time limit to encourage the user to think and answer appropriately.
The game ensures visual prompts to understand the settings and locations of the tale. This way visual perception skills and attention to detail are assured. With a serene red background and easy gameplay, it can be a choice for young learners.
5. Day At The Zoo
Day at the zoo is a game where a mother and daughter go to spend a day at the zoo. It starts with a slide show type of narration of the story with visual and audio cues. The narration has crucial elements in order. For instance, they see multiple animals one after the other. Visual prompts of the story are displayed in chronological order as the story is narrated.
After this, users come across multiple questions regarding this tale. Now, the story can be restarted by muting the audio to let the users narrate the story using the prompts.
This may test the sequencing skills of the child and the capacity of the brain to retain the events. The little one can remember the order in which Ava and mom have traveled- which implies they retain crucial details effortlessly.
6. Story Sequencing
For students looking to practice sequencing events by recalling the story, this game may be a take-in. Set up in a snowfall area, the story revolves around two friends who want to enjoy making a snowman and relishing nature.
This game starts with a narration of the story with two lines on each slide. Soon after this, the users are asked to sequence the images given as per the narration. Players need to drag the appropriate image from the upper menu and place them in order on the lower side tray.
This way, visual sequencing, and retelling can be simultaneously ensured. Since the stories are small- not more than 3-4 lines, the gameplay can be accomplished soon thereby little ones can be flexible in taking up new stories in their exercise.
7. Goldilocks Reading Comprehension
With an animated or comic style, Goldilocks Reading Comprehension is an eminent choice. Set up in a house of three levels, this story is all about three bears living in it and the taste of their porridges.
With admirable animations, the story starts with the setting and story of the porridge that they made. In this journey, the users are asked a few questions to take the tale forward, this way their listening skills and attention is addressed. Once the story is told, the user can replay it to make their own narrations based on these prompts.
The game is simple yet engaging for little learners. As the setting reflects home with daily used appliances and furniture, players can get involved soon to make it an engaging option.
8. Sequencing Short Stories
This game ensures a complete self-learning and retelling session for little ones. The start screen appears with three different pictures and an audio story being narrated based on them. In the later screen, these images are shuffled. Players here are asked to arrange them in order to retell the story.
Players can come across multiple stories similar to this to make sure multiple exercises. The clear edge is that this game comes with three images. This makes practice for younger children feasible to start with.
9. Pick the Theme
A story can be retold with images but to ensure the same, the students need to be able to recognize what the image is all about. This game gives scope for children to learn to identify the theme of the story.
The game starts with four images, a question, and three options. Based on these images, the player needs to choose the right option to identify them. It is made of multiple entities like stars, fruits, dishes, and much more
How to use this game for story retelling?
Teachers can make out an instant story with the image shown and narrate the same to the children. Now, they can ask pupils to answer the question. This way, the little ones can develop better inferring skills from images as a part of retelling.
10. Picture Sequencing
Using a set of scene cards can make a noteworthy retelling session. This game recreates similar sessions in a digital medium. Set up in a simple activity room, a set of pictures are arranged for the players to put in order to make a story.
How to use this game for retelling?
Teachers first look at the cards and accordingly narrate a mini-story to the pupil, They may use these cards to demonstrate. Now, the little one can arrange them in order and then retell the story to the teacher for evaluation.
This game comes in three levels: 3 cards, 4 cards, and 5 cards. Pupils can choose an appropriate level and start practicing at any time. With these options mentors can avail several stories, improving flexibility.
Concluding thoughts
Games and activities are often exercising for visual perception skills. Also, they are often engaging. Here retelling doesn’t come with any bias through these online games. Educational games improve reading comprehension, fasten the reading speed and introduce colorful stories. Among multiple approaches to retelling, visual prompts from these games make it engaging for students to exercise more- polishing multiple skills implicitly. Traverse through the above interesting games to avoid missing out on admirable story retelling sessions.
References:
- Sella, A. C., Bandini, C. S. M., Bandini, H. H. M., Ribeiro, D. M., & Vieira, H. C. (2015). Effects of picture prompts on story retelling performance in typically developing children. Psicologia: Reflexão e Crítica, 28(2), 397-403.
- Pickert, S. M., & Chase, M. L. (1978). Story retelling: An informal technique for evaluating children’s language. The Reading Teacher, 31(5), 528-531.
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,