Storyboard

Rationale

The Storyboards teaching strategy helps students keep track of a narrative’s main ideas and supporting details by having them illustrate the story’s important scenes. Storyboarding can be used when texts are read aloud or when students read independently. Checking the thoroughness and accuracy of students’ storyboards is an effective way for you to evaluate reading comprehension before moving on to more analytic tasks.

Procedure

Provide a Storyboard Template
Share with students the storyboard template in the handout section below, or design your own. The template should have several blocks that are large enough for students to draw pictures, with room for captions below.
Students Draw Main Ideas
Ask students to draw the main ideas of a story. Students could do this after hearing a story aloud or while reading a story to themselves. Each drawing should have a short caption explaining what is happening in the picture. You could also have students use relevant quotations from the story as captions.
Students Share Storyboards
You can ask students to compare storyboards with a partner or a small group. How are their storyboards similar? How are they different? This discussion can help students clarify basic ideas in the text and can also help them analyze which ideas are most important.