[1Shannon1]

After a guided reading lesson (this is 1st grade) I will ask my students to discuss with me what the story was about. The students moan and groan!! They HATE retelling me the story - and I really have to pull it out of them.

The students I'm working on comprehension with are my highest readers too!

I've tried doing story maps, reading responses...but they just see it as "extra work" that only they have to do! (Since my lower level readers aren't ready to do these types of activities yet.)

Does anyone have any ideas to make teaching the comprehension part of guided reading more fun? Or are there other ways to check comprehension that I could do for my higher readers?

Thanks in advance!!

[metalco]

Maybe use puppets to talk to a friend and retell the main points?

[l8ybug]

any writing for now. Not until you can get everyone to do it.
What about using comprehension spinners? Each student can take a turn spinning the spinner and whatever question they land on, they have to answer it. This makes it more fun and there's no pencil and paper task. You can still see if they understand the story.
Here's a link to the spinners:
http://www.creativeteaching.com/p-15...-spinners.aspx
Another idea is to have strips of paper with sentences from the story that they have to sequence. They can work together and you can observe. I find that when it's a little more "hands on" and "verbal", they enjoy it more. Hope this helps!

[1Shannon1]

Great ideas...thanks so much!!

[ritabook2]

There are also comprehension beach balls that you can toss to one another. There are questions on the balls, and whatever their hand lands on is the question they answer. You can make your own with cheap beach balls from the dollar store and a Sharpie, too! I have one with simple things, like characters, setting, problem, and solution and another one with beginning, middle, end, what will happen next? and a few other things I can't remember at the moment.