Create your own Cookie's Week retelling activity with this free download for kindergarten.
This is how I created a Cookie's Week retell activity to go in our retell center as a storytelling option for my kindergarten students.
Let me show you what’s in our set and give you the materials to make it happen in your classroom too.
It's one of my favorite literacy centers and we usually introduce Cookie's Week in mid-spring.
I will have read this book as a read-aloud by this point, so now the work begins! We dissect it as a pattern story and enjoy using what we know about reading skills to determine the days of the week and explore the text.
It also helps build up my lowest readers since the text is more simple than some of the other books we feature in this center.
At this center - they read, they act, they use lots of great vocabulary and are developing fantastic reading habits all while continuing to build their love of reading.
My kinders get to choose the book(s) they want to retell while they are at this literacy center. And often, I find that students like to work on this one independently, which is great!
What's In My Cookie's Week Retell Set
Here are the props I gathered rather inexpensively (and you can too) to bring the book alive once we knew it by heart.
I scanned the pictures of Cookie getting into trouble each day of the week. This is kinda old school, I should update it and just take a picture with my phone!
I also created the days of the week so students could sequence the order.
I laminated both the pictures and photos and added velcro dots onto the backs. I made a laminated storyboard from 12x18 construction paper with seven squares and rectangles to put the pieces onto.
* As a side note, the beanie baby was donated but I know you can easily find them at a garage sale or find something similar at the dollar store!
While I don't have this exact file as pictured above to share, but I found one for you below that'll work great too. {You know I've got your back!}
How to Make Your Own Cookie's Week Retell Activity
If you plan to make this a year-long literacy center, I highly recommend that you read the Retell Literacy Center Directions for more details and making everything run smooth.
Because you can make this kindergarten activity yourself and once you and your students are hooked on retelling you’ll want to make this a year-long thing.
Here are the materials you’ll need… (may include affiliate book links to Amazon)
Materials
- Cookie's Week Printables {Free download}
- Alternative Cookie's Week retelling foldable {free}
- Black and White Cat (beanie baby)
- Velcro
- Cookie's Week Book by Cindy Ward
What to Do
If you don’t want to create a poster with velcro, like I did, you can print the free download props and days of the week.
Then color, laminate and place them together along with your book copy. A container like an open basket, a book bin or a large Ziploc bag will work!
All they need to do is have the book and the materials and use the props to tell as much as they can:
- about the story
- from the story
- with the story (following along)
Encourage kinders to use as many words from the text as they can remember. With a patterned story like this one, it can be easier and if you're doing it later in the school year you can expect them to use the text more to guide their retelling.
There you have it – how to make a Cookie's Week retell activity for your class. I love that it doesn’t require much to get it done. {wink}
If you like this activity, check out this list of 20 more famous stories that are great for retelling in kindergarten. Most of them are even more simple to pull together and I’ve found all of the downloadable resources for you.
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