Narratives and Retell's as a tool for the SLP

A couple Friday's ago, I was lucky enough to get to go to a professional development lecture by Sandra Gilliam of Utah State University. She has done tons of research about story retells and oral discourse and how it effects students learning and developed a great tool called SKILL (Supporting Knowledge In Language and Literacy). It was a great lecture and it gave some guidance about how the SLP can effectively improve student language skills and help them to achieve common core standards for their grade levels. I was amazed at the number of standards an SLP can effect by working on oral discourse and story retell per grade level!


This is just Kindergarten, but it gives you an idea. The common core standards build upon these skills as the student progresses through out their educational career. The following standards are from the website for common core state standards.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.K.2 With prompting and support, retell familiar stories, including key details
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.K.1 With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about key details in a text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.K.2 With prompting and support, identify the main topic and retell key details of a text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.K.3 With prompting and support, describe the connection between two individuals, events, ideas, or pieces of information in a text
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.K.3 Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to narrate a single event or several loosely linked events, tell about the events in the order in which they occurred, and provide a reaction to what happened.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.K.5 With guidance and support from adults, respond to questions and suggestions from peers and add details to strengthen writing as needed.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.K.6 Speak audibly and express thoughts, feelings, and ideas clearly
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.1 Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.1b Use frequently occurring nouns and verbs.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.1c Form regular plural nouns orally by adding /s/ or /es/ (e.g., dog, dogs; wish, wishes).

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.1e Use the most frequently occurring prepositions (e.g., to, from, in, out, on, off, for, of, by, with).

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.1f Produce and expand complete sentences in shared language activities.

SS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.6 Use words and phrases acquired through conversations, reading and being read to, and responding to texts.
 Other reasons I particularly liked the SKILL approach is because it allows the SLP to work with the students language as a whole instead of just answering and asking questions, you can work on grammar and vocabulary. Since the SKILL approach also focuses on the character's emotional response to events and how those response lead to other events you can work on perspective taking. It's a very well thought out and interesting approach.  If you would like more information about SKILL (Supporting Knowledge In Language and Literacy) you can visit the Utah State University Works page.
As a school SLP, I think it is vital that we address educationally relevant modes of communication. For our kids this is taking the form of writing their own stories and retelling stories they have heard to show comprehension of topics outside of langauge arts.