How to Use Retelling Cube for Stories

When you first begin working with students who have significant cognitive disabilities or those navigating the complexities of a new language, you quickly realize that "retelling" is often the most difficult mountain to climb. You might finish a story and ask, "What happened?" only to be met with a shrug or a single, disconnected word. To a student with an IEP, a story can feel like a jumble of unrelated events rather than a cohesive journey.

As a mentor, I’ve learned that our job isn’t to demand a better memory; it’s to provide a better structure. We have to take the abstract act of "remembering" and turn it into the concrete act of "sorting." In my classroom, we’ve found that the most effective way to do this is by turning the story into something the students can literally hold in their hands.

The Power of the Concrete Tool

For a neurodiverse learner, the instruction to "tell me what happened" is far too broad. It lacks borders. Recently, I introduced the Retelling Cube Strategy Toolkit during our literacy block, and it shifted the energy of the room almost instantly.

The strategy is simple: we use a six-sided cube—a thinking tool—that assigns a specific, essential question to each face. Instead of facing the void of a blank page or a wide-open question, the student is only responsible for one focused element at a time. They roll the cube and, suddenly, they aren't "retelling a story"; they are just finding the setting, or identifying the main character’s goal.

Observations from the "We Do" Phase

During our Whole Group Instruction, I watched as students who typically avoid eye contact during reading comprehension tasks began to reach for the cube. We were reading a short narrative about a technician solving a problem in a workplace—a scenario we often use to bridge the gap between literacy and workforce preparation.

I saw a student who usually struggles with oral language roll the cube and land on the "Problem" icon. On our Retelling Cube Strategy anchor chart, they found the corresponding visual and the sentence starter: "The problem in the story is..." They didn't have to stumble over how to begin. They simply looked at the icon, found the anchor on the wall, and spoke with a level of clarity I hadn't seen from them all semester.

What surprised me most was the shift in independence during Partner Work. Usually, I am the one prompting the "what comes next?" sequence. But with the cube, the students were prompting each other. I overheard one student say to their partner, "You got the solution, now I need to roll for the ending." They were utilizing a task-analysis approach without even realizing it—breaking a complex skill into six manageable steps.

Building Confidence Through Predictability

For our ELL and Tier 3 learners, confidence is often a casualty of complexity. When we remove the "guessing game" of what a teacher wants, we allow the student’s intelligence to shine. The Retelling Cube provides that predictability. Because the icons—representing the character, goal, setting, problem, solution, and ending—remain the same regardless of the story, the students develop a "mental map" they can use all year.

This scaffolding led to a noticeable change in their individual work. Because the resource is low-prep and visual-heavy, the students stopped looking at me for permission to move forward. They had the tool, they knew the icons, and they felt equipped to organize their own thinking. The cube turned an intimidating cognitive task into a structured game, and that playfulness reduced the "affective filter" that often blocks learning.

Why Structure Leads to Real Comprehension

In our setting, we are always looking toward the goal of workforce readiness. Clear communication—the ability to summarize a situation, identify a problem, and explain a solution—is a foundational employment skill. When we teach a student to retell a story clearly, we are teaching them how to process information in a way that the world can understand.

Teachers love this strategy because it turns the abstract into the tactile. It builds oral language, supports struggling readers, and encourages complete, organized responses. When students can retell clearly, they aren't just repeating words; they are demonstrating that they truly understand the heart of the story.

As you mentor your students through their narratives this week, watch for that moment where the "shrug" disappears and is replaced by the confident roll of a cube. It’s a small movement, but it represents a massive leap in comprehension.

When you move from asking open-ended comprehension questions to providing a tactile, structured tool like the retelling cube, how does the balance of power in your classroom shift from "teacher-led" to "student-driven"?