Story Frames

Question: How help young students re-construct a story they have read?

Answer/Quote: “The story frame is a skeletal outline of the test…. The skeleton contains just enough information to improve the child’s recall of the story.” 239.

 Quote: “The story frame…is not designed to test memory of text. Rather, its aim is to help readers construct a coherent understanding of a text. One of the difficulties that some readers face is not being able to organize the information they took in from reading the text; they may remember only isolated segments. This framing technique helps them to construct a coherent representation of the text.” 241.

Example of a story frame of Where the Wild Things Are.

Max gets himself into trouble when he…..

His mother….

That night in Max’s room….

So Max sailed away to …..

And met….

Max tamed them and they made him….

But Max became lonely and wanted….

So he left the Land of the Wild Things and when he reached home….

 Comment: This is a good start to help students organize the re-telling of a story. What would be the next step? [And I would suggest that not “some” but many readers, including many adults can not re-tell stories or events effectively.] RayS.

Title: “Story Frames—Story Cloze.” Trevor H. Cairney. Reading Teacher (November 1987), pp. 239-241.