What we're reading Wednesday

So far I'm sticking to my scheduling ideas. Although I did mean to post about reading yesterday and just ran out of time. I can't imagine how that happened. It could of been that we were planning kindergarten graduation which is 2 week away.
Anyway, this week my kids and I are reading Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons.

(By the way, when I just got the picture from Amazon, I saw that there is a new Pete the Cat Christmas book coming out in September. I will need to pre order that one.
I fell in love with Pete the Cat this summer on Fran's blog Kindergarten Crayons and had to buy the book. My kids fell in love with him and it has escaleted since then. When I told my kids, I had a surprise for them and that it was a new Pete the Cat. They were so excited. They wanted me to read it right then. We had a blast reading it the first day. We had to read it twice. (That was yesterday) Today we reread the story and then worked on retelling the story. I had them help me retell the story by memory. Then I showed them a retelling bracelet I had made. I've seen this idea on Kindergarten Crayons and from Dr. Jean. I took a pipe cleaner and put a yellow, red, green, a different shade of green, blue, white and black bead on it. Then I used the beads to remind me of the different events in the story. Here's what they stood for:
yellow - Pete put on his favorite shirt with four groovy buttons. I moved that bead over so there were four in the middle.
Red - a button that pops off
Green - another button that pops off
Light green - another button that pops off
Blue - the last button that popped off
As we talked about each of these beads, we talked about how many buttons there were left and sang the song.
White - belly button
Black - the lesson we can learn. Things will come and things will go. But do we cry? Goodness no!
I let a couple of kids come up and retell the story using the bracelet and then they got to make their own bracelet. Then they retold the story to a partner. I think we probably need a little more practice with that. I meant to take a picture of it but it just didn't happen. Maybe I'll add some pictures tomorrow.
But tomorrow is my last evaluation for the year. I try not to put on a show when I have people in the room. So I'm planning on just doing my usual reading lesson. We're going to retell the story using our bracelets and then compare it to Pete the Cat:I love my white shoes. I hope to use the label Venn diagram that I talked about in my math post. I bought the Pete the Cat pack from Blues Skies First Grade and she has a venn diagram and a couple of pages I'm going to use. (I wasn't able to use the venn diagram from her pack) Here are a couple of pictures of our work.

It should be a pretty good lesson. It's something I would do normally. I just hope I have a voice. I've been dealing with a sinus infection and my voice has been really scratchy today. I'm at home now trying to rest my voice. So what do you do to retell stories in your class? Is your class Pete the Cat crazy? I loved the discussion that was in the comments on my math post. Keep the comments coming.
Here are the response sheets I used in my lesson. I differentiated them. My kids that are good writers got the blank lines and then the ones that need a little more assistance got the ones with prompts. They did a great job on it. 
Pete the Cat Writing Response