Story Sequencing: Number the Pictures

Two short picture stories hang on two washing lines across this kindergarten page, four frames to a line, and under every frame sits an empty dashed box for a number. Nothing on the page is in order. On the sheet shown the first line tells the life of a banana on a plate: whole, then one strip of peel pulled down, then three strips hanging open, then only the empty peel lying flat. The second line is a hopscotch court being drawn in chalk on a pavement, from bare ground to a finished court of squares drawn in white chalk lines, while the stick of chalk at the corner gets shorter in every frame. The child writes 1, 2, 3 and 4 in the boxes to put each story-sequencing line back in order.

The instruction asks children to look at what changes, and that is the whole skill. A banana that gets more and more peeled, a court that gets longer, a stick that gets shorter: each story has one thing that only moves one way, and once a child finds it the order follows. That is the thinking behind retelling a story in the right order, which kindergarten reading standards ask for, done here before any reading is needed.

One sheet, two stories, eight boxes. This is the base page of the story sequencing family and the one that numbers the pictures; its faces ask children to cut and paste a strip under first, next and last, choose what happens next, draw the missing middle, match sentences to pictures and write the story. Talk through one line together first. If a child numbers the hopscotch frames by the court alone, point to the chalk: two clues that agree make the order certain.