PELP - Retelling the story in my first language

The book 'Locked Out' was a guided reading book the students had been working with previous to this lesson. The students were very familiar with the story. As this book was one of the titles available as dual language copies I thought it was the perfect opportunity to have a play and explore using the dual language books with my students. The group of students I was working with were Tongan Samoan and Maori.

Day 1- The students were shown the Samoan, Tongan and English books and were asked what do you notice about the books. Is there anything different about them? Is there anything the same?
Students explored the books and after I read the title of each book to them they discovered that they were in different languages.
Students were each given a book in their first language and asked in small groups to retell (talk about what happens in the book) the story in language using the pictures.

Each group naturally started talking in their first language with parts of their dialogue in English the English parts being well-known phrases from knowing the English text. The older students naturally took the lead within the group (I teach a Year 1-3 class).

Day 2- We listened to the audio in Tongan and stopped it every now and then to talk about the story. The students told me what some of the words and phrases meant and I repeated them.

This was a beautiful session. All the students were engaged in listening to the text and were excited to be my teacher and correct my pronunciation. 

Day 3- The students listened/read along to the audio version of the story accessed through our class site as an independent reading activity. Then as a follow-up activity, they were given a sequence of pictures, and text, from the book that they had to put together and sequence.

Even though the students couldn't read the text in their first language they were looking carefully at the print to match it to the picture. The discussions they had around the retelling and sequencing of the story was brilliant and most of it done in their first language. They worked in groups with students with the same first language. I added that it was a competition to see who could get it correct which took it to another level of excitement.

Day 4- This book is now going home along with a set of pictures and matching text and a note to parents with ideas on how to use the book at home.

I'm excited to hear feedback from the parents.
My Maori students decided it wasn't fair that there was no book in Te Reo so connected with some of our older students to write their own Te Reo version using explain everything.