Level A: Nonprompted retell without passage (teachers asks students to retell without allowing them access to the story; data are gathered for each story element below; teachers stop students when they cannot recall anything else and proceed to Level B for any elements not scored as Level A).
Level B: Nonprompted retell with passage (teachers asks students to retell with access to the story; data are gathered on story elements not scored as Level A; teachers stop students when they cannot recall anything else and proceed to Level C for any elements not scored as Level A or B).
Level C: Prompted retell without passage (teachers do not provide students access to passage; they ask students questions or provide prompts such as, “What was the main idea of the story?”; teachers stop students when they cannot recall anything else and proceed to the final level—Level D).
Level D: Prompted retell with access to passage (teachers provide the passage to the students; they ask students questions or provide prompts such as, “What was the main idea of the story?”; students are stopped when they cannot recall anything else).
The following elements are tracked during the story retell. Again, each narrative element is recorded as either A, B, C, or D.
Story Sense
Setting
Characters
Events/Episodes
Resolution
The above elements are each scored as 1 point with the exception of Resolution elements (each scored as .5). Thus, there is a total of 10 points for this story retell. Data are tracked across levels (A-D). These data can be graphed (charted) over time. Hall, Tindal, and Flick (1993) describe a similar procedure for conducting “reading retells.”