Retell the Story with Starters

Four pictures run down the left of this 2nd grade page on a timeline, and beside each are two writing lines with a grey starter word already printed on the first: First, Next, Then and Finally. A word bank across the top offers fence, plank, paint, brush and bucket. On the sheet shown the story is a white picket fence of six planks with a paint bucket at its foot. In the first picture none is painted and the brush rests in the bucket; then a hand reaches in from the top with the brush and two planks are orange, then four, and in the last picture all six are painted and the brush is back in the bucket. The child writes what happens in each picture, starting every sentence with its printed word.

This is where the story sequencing family ends up: from numbering pictures to writing the story in full. The starters take care of the order words, so the effort goes into saying what happened, and the word bank takes care of spelling the nouns. Second grade writing asks for a sequence of events with time words and a sense of closure, and Finally invites exactly that. Only a hand is drawn holding the brush, so children decide whose hand it is; I painted is as good as my dad painted.

Eight lines, four sentences. The brush and the bucket are both drawn clearly, so every word in the bank has a picture to point to. Stronger writers can add how many planks are done in each picture, which the pictures show clearly. Pair it with the sentence matching face, where the same four time words are read before they are written.