The Tiny Seed Story Recall Pictures

The first step in this lesson after reading The Tiny Seed is to create The Tiny Seed story recall pictures. Involving your students in this process is fun and also helps their comprehension skills. Depending on how many students you have, you may need to divide your students into groups of two or three before assigning them a picture to draw.

You can assign student groups to illustrate one two-page spread of the story. They do not have to copy Eric Carle's illustrations exactly, but they can try to do it in his style if they would like. You can have students use crayons or markers. You can also have students sketch illustrations first, get them checked by you to make sure they fit the text of their assigned pages, and then they can paint the illustrations.

Once illustrations are finished, your classroom has its own set of The Tiny Seed story recall pictures. These pictures tell the story of The Tiny Seed in order without any text added to them.

The Tiny Seed story recall pictures can be used to help students retell the story of The Tiny Seed. Some visual learners may need visual cues to remember the details of the story. This does not mean that the student didn't comprehend Eric Carle's story. It just means that they need a cue to "jog" their memory.

You can use these story pictures with the entire class, in guided reading groups, or when working with individuals. When a student gets stuck on his retelling of The Tiny Seed, you can show him an illustration (story recall picture), and then he will most likely be able to finish his retelling if he understood the story. If you have a student that struggles with retellings, you can set the picture cards in front of him, in order, to aid him in his retelling. This is not cheating! He still has to verbally tell the story correctly and explain what happens in the plot. The Tiny Seed story recall pictures are just hints. If you are doing an assessment, you can just note that he told the story with the aid of illustrations.

You can also do a whole-class activity with the story recall pictures. Mix up the cards and pass them out to individuals in your class. Ask the student who believes he has the first event in The Tiny Seed to come to the front of the room. Ask students if this is the first event when the student shows them his story recall picture. If he is correct, he remains standing in the front of the room. (If your students are too young to stand for a long-period of time, you could just display the first card and ask the student to sit back down.) Your students continue to come to the front of the room with their illustrations in the correct story sequence.