pls check my thinking

[Brit]

I'm working on sequencing with grade 2's. After reading a (fabulous) book for 2 days together, I want to have them sequence captioned pics from the book to retell the story. Here's the tricky part. there are 20 pages, and I only want to use 9. I've figured out which ones are "filler" and which ones are key to the story. We can do it in 9 without losing out on any key story elements, which I figure is a reasonable amount to ask the kids to sequence. I'm just cutting out the repetative echo sequence that happens pretty much every other page. BUT is it going to work if I narrow it down so much?

ALSO, I feel that of the 9, there are a few that I would accept a number of different orders in (e.g. the order the characters enter isn't really important to the story, so I don't care if the kids remember if the hippos came in before the giraffe, or whatever). Can I accept the variety of answers, or is that a "cheat"? I'm really looking for whether or not the kids can retell a story in correct sequence, but I don't feel the having the exact detail sequence is important if the main story comes through in sequence. I want all the characters to be introduced in the sequencing activity, because leaving them out causes storyline problems, but again, it doesn't really matter who comes in the door first in the re-telling...I don't think....just as long as they're all included.

Does this make sense? Is it going to work?

[Boxcar]

Is this grade 2 or age 2?

[Brit]

grade 2. I'd loose my mind trying to do this with 2-year-olds!!!!!

[dsmms]

I would think it would depend on what the objective of the lesson is. If it is sequencing, then I would say the order is important.

[Boxcar]

I agree. The order will be important. Children of this age are still too concrete to see alternatives the first couple times they approach a lesson.

ONe thing I've done is Flip Books. It is a great to teach sequencing and allows the children to do Creative Art.

[Brit]

thanks, all. I got the activity halfway finished today, and I think they got it pretty well, even with the removed pages. They really didn't seem to be bothered by the fact that it wasn't EXACTLY like the book once I explained that some pages weren't there and why. As I said before, it was just the repeated echo part of the book that I removed so that they wouldn't have 20 little squares to cut out and sequence.

so far, the accuracy rate has been really high (8/9 or 7/9). My lowest group hasn't finished yet, but they seemed to know exactly what to do. Not bad for a first attempt!

I did decide to be strict with the ordering, so I chose pages that give very broad hints to where they belonged in the book if I thought there could be any ambiguity. We also talked about the order the animals came in and how they are all in the picture after they come in. it worked well.