"The retelling simply assesses the reader's recall (i.e., short-term memory) of important facts based on the independent reading of a new story." (Dorn, L. J., & Soffos, C., 2005, p. 15)
Retelling is the act of orally communicating from memory what the reader determined to be important about a text that was read. Retelling mirrors the original selection in language, structure, and length.
retell what you read to somebody else. Record the pages you read and who you talked to about your reading.
Find and read a story which is retold by the author. Find and read an earlier telling of the same story by a different author. How are the two stories alike, and how are they different?
Have someone retell a story to you. Next, read the story they retold. What was the same about their retelling, what was different?