Teaching Children to Recall and Retell Past Events

In this episode of the Speech and Language Kids Podcast, speech-language pathologist Carrie Clark discusses how to help children remember past events and tell you about them later.

Notes:

1. Remembering a Single Picture

• Show them a picture and then put it away and say “What was in the picture?”

2. Answering Questions about a Book

• Read a story and then ask specific questions about it immediately after like “Who was the main character?” and “What did he do at the ___?”.

3. Recalling Events from a Book

• Read a story and then immediately after ask them “What happened in the story?”
• Prompt them to tell you 3 events from the story and then put them in order.

For more information about helping a child learn to sequence, click here!

4. Answering Questions about an Immediately Past Event

• Do something and then immediately ask the child questions about what you just did.
• Once they can do that, move on to asking questions about something that happened right before starting to work on this.

5. Recalling Events from an Immediately Past Event

• Do three things and then ask the child to retell the three things in order.
• Ask the child to tell you what happened during the activity immediately before starting to work on this.

6. Answering Questions about Further Past Events

• Ask the child questions about an event that happened a while ago, like their last meal or what they did after school last night.
• Ask the child questions about events that happened further and further back, like their last birthday party or going to visit Grandma.

7. Recalling Events from a Further Past Event

• Ask the child to retell three things that happened during an event that happened a while ago while keeping the steps in order.
• Work on doing this for things that happened further and further back.

Download the Free Sequencing Game:

To help a child work on learning to sequence past events, click on the button below to download the free game: