Cinderella as Retold/Summarized by Grade 5

In 5th grade, we are reviewing the difference between retelling and summarizing a story. Retelling has lots more details and may contain dialogue, like the students' retelling of "Cinderella" below.

Ms. Moore's favorite retelling is "Ever After," starring Drew Barrymore.
Photo from thewonderfulworldofcinema.wordpress.com.

Retelling

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Cinderella who lost her father in a hurricane. She was bossed around by her stepsisters and stepmother. She was forced to do all the cleaning while her other family members just relaxed. They made her do all these chores like she was their housekeeper.

Her sisters got an invitation to a ball, and Cinderella overhead about it while she was cleaning. She was not going to be allowed to go to the ball. She was mad that she couldn't go, and then this ghost (aka fairy godmother) appeared out of nowhere and she made it so that she would have a good time.

She gave her a carriage and said "Bibbedy-bobbedy-boo." And then she turned the mice into a horse and a driver and gave Cinderella glass shoes.The godmother said that she could only stay at the ball until midnight, or the power would stop.

Cinderella goes to the castle and she meets the prince and dances. When she was leaving, she lost a shoe. The prince picked up the shoe. He went house to house and finally got to Cinderella's house and knocked on the door. The stepsisters tried on the shoe, but it didn't fit. So the stepmom cut off her toe so she could try it on. Then C. tried it on, and it fit.

Then the prince and Cinderella got married and lived happily ever after.

Summary

After we retold Cinderella in four paragraphs, it was time to summarize it in a couple of sentences. The method I taught the 5th graders is Somebody Wanted But So Then. Here are some of the summaries they came up with:

C. wanted to be treated equally.
But the stepsisters didn't like her.
So they treated her like garbage.
Then they found the invitation to the ball.

C. wanted to go to the ball.
But her stepmother and stepsisters said she couldn't go and had to clean everything.
So the fairy godmother came.
Then she got to go to the ball.

The stepmother wanted C. to clean.
But the fairy godmother came.
So C. went to the ball.
Then she lost her shoe.

The evil stepmother wanted the prince to marry one of her daughters.
But the prince didn't love either of them.
So he left to find someone else.
Then he and C. lived happily ever after.

The prince wanted to find a wife.
But he had trouble.
So he threw a ball.
Then he went searching for a girl he met.

The prince wanted to find a wife.
But the shoe didn't fit anyone.
So he kept knocking on doors.
Finally he got the right person.

Subscribing to Magazines in Rooms 9 and 11

Of the 6,000 items in our library, 4% are magazines, including American Girl, Ask, Chop Chop, Discovery Girls, National Geographic Kids, and Sports Illustrated for Kids. Third and fourth graders went through them and made a list of how magazines are different from books. For example:

• lots of headlines on the front cover, rather than just one title
• flimsier construction
• departments that appear each month
• lots of photos

We discussed text features like section heads and captions, and the students spent the next library class finding examples in issues of Ranger Rick.

Here are Room 9 and 11 students working:

Grade 5/6 Ads

As I shared in a previous post, I did an advertising unit with 5th- and 6th-graders leading up to the Superbowl. A lot of them were so into the assignment, they took it home to work on further. Here are some of their creations:

Opposites! Opposites! with Grade 1

After we read Black? White! Day? Night! by Laura Vaccaro Seeger, Grade 1 students worked together to develop lists of opposites. They got some inspiration from this Sesame Street video, and had a few books to help with ideas as well.

I have to say, I was impressed by how many new word pairs the kids came up with from their brains. Here are just some of their words; can your family fill in the table below with what's missing? Can you come up with more examples?

old
	dry
quick
	nonfiction
cloudy
	left
pull
	out