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Accommodating poor narration skills for a 15yr old with LDs
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I have a 15yo who is doing remedial work in almost every subject. He is dyslexic and probably has some working memory and processing issues as well, although I haven’t had him evaluated. He has always struggled with oral narrations, and now that he is older I’m not sure what to do next.
He gives very good oral narrations if the book is below his reading level and has picures. But even then he forgets the names of people and places, even if prepared before hand. Think of the Gilgamesh trilogy children’s series by Ludmila Zeman. He gave great narrations with those books.
http://www.amazon.com/Gilgamesh-King-The-Trilogy/dp/0887764371/ref=cm_sw_em_r_awd1_uQkjsb1QS4473_tt
But most history books at his reading level are a struggle to narrate, even if I read them aloud. I have to read them paragraph by paragraph and have him narrate. This takes so long that we normally don’t do that for the whole thing. So he gets little more than a few of the main ideas from a reading. Sometimes I think all he is getting is exposure. To be honest, sometimes I think no learning is taking place from the reading. It isn’t until I add in a video or picture book that he learns, and then he really really does learn. He can tell *me* things weeks later, things I totally missed at the time.
I know the answer is right in front of me, but I’m just not sure how proceed with narrations. Should use easier books at a lower level and concentrate on building oral narration skills with him? That’s what I think I should do, but how do I give him a meatier content that usually isn’t available from those books. He can handle details, just not often in the way it is written in middle school books. He handles it better from video, pictures, or just me teaching him.
Another example from Our Island Story: he will get the main events but not all the details and definitely not the people and place names, not even with a pre-reading discussion. I would have to write them on a paper for him to reference during the narration, and even then, he will forget them a few minutes later. It would take him many many times before he would remember a few unfamiliar names.
Where do I start? What should I do to get him prepared for highschool (7th grade now). I feel like he needs baby steps to get there, something even more broken down than what CM outlines.
I’m rambling now…
TIA
Shae
Sorry I don’t have an answer for you; will be curious to see what others say. My 14 year old son has some learning challenges; we should be well into written narrations by now, but I am happy to hear anything when it comes to oral feedback. I can tell you that my son enjoys documentaries that parallel what we are studying in History or Literature. Perhaps your son is more of a visual learner, so maybe you could supplement some videos and have him narrate the content.
Thanks Marie. I came to the same conclusion after I made this post. 🙂
It’s true that the answer was right in front of me. For some reason I was thinking that narration was somehow separate skill, apart from the process of learning the content of the book. Lol. I really wanna roll on the floor laughing at the notion because I realize now that narration = learning. If the child knows the content, he can narrate it right? So my problem wasn’t with the skill of narration, although that is a skill to cultivate, as much as it is a problem with asking him to narrate content above his level of comprehension.
I guess when high school is on the horizon, it makes one frantic, especially when dealing with a delayed learner.
So now I’m thinking the answer is to use interesting books that are well below his reading level. Let him build a foundation with that, narrate, discuss, and then dig deeper to put flesh on the bones of the subject by using videos, hands on projects, experiments, field trips, interactive tutorials (uZingGo and Gizmos for science), science riddles (thought experiments), and pictures of real objects like artifacts, diagrams, etc.
We are already doing most of this, but now I have a clearer perspective of what these things serve. I think I will need to replace some of the books I have been reading aloud with a lecture in the form of me narrating the content to him in a way he can better understand. That is, if I can’t find another way.
Any other ideas anyone?
Shae
My son is 14 and has major learning challenges. In your situation (which is very similar to mine) I would have him read (or you read) very simple engaging stories. Start with picture books if you need to for narration. Then for his other learning I would read with him – or to him- and discuss things if you could. No pressure on questions or narrations, just a person to person discussion. And use as much visual stuff as you can – videos, picture books. That way he is working on his recall with something easy but can still learn harder things at the same time. Otherwise, if you pick books he can narrate for history or science then you will be holding him back in what he could learn about.
For my son, I can’t go too hard with the history and science books, but they can be harder than what he can narrate. I have used things like Pathway readers for narration because he likes those kinds of stories and he can follow the story line easily. Pick what he likes.
HTH
The problem with choosing books harder than what he can narrate is that he isn’t learning much from them, even when I read aloud. It’s very difficult to find engaging simple stories which still have some meat to them. Like I said earlier, he can remember the main events from books like Our Island Story but he can’t remember who or where. And also, most of the details are not remembered. He just gets the basic story line.
That’s why I personally came to the conclusion that narration ability indicates the level of learning taking place. If the book is too difficult to narrate, even when read aloud, then it is really above his learning level, wouldn’t you say?
This child actually learns better if he can read the story for himself, but he can’t read books like Our Island Story without some level of frustration because of the long sentence structure. And yes, I have always exposed him to these sorts of books. So I guess that is just part of his dyslexia. I don’t know.
I’m not very familiar with pathway readers. I will check them out. Thanks!
I am having similar issues with my ds 12. We are using Dianne Craft’s Brain Integration Therapy and she has lots of helpful info on her site. I found this last night and we are going to be trying it starting today. HTH
http://www.diannecraft.org/when-a-child-doesnt-remember-what-he-reads/
Well, for my son, he can understand and learn from much harder books than he can narrate. There is the glitch for him between what it in his mind and what he can say or write. Your son could be different, I don’t know. My theory is that he gets what he gets from the harder books. The narration books are working on the skill of narration only. I don’t pick really high school level books – more like upper elementary to Jr. high level books. But I know he understands some of it because all of the sudden he will come out with a bit of information that he read that surprises me.
Older books have longer sentence structure that is harder for my son as well. I look for “newer” books that are simpler sentences and vocabulary.
I would say it depends on your son whether reading aloud to him or him reading it himself is better. We do both. Does your son read really well? If not I would either have him read them aloud to you or read them to him – depending on the book and maybe some of both. If he reads them silently and he doesn’t read well, that would be a bigger problem with understanding.
We also did Dianne Craft’s Brain Integration for a while year. It did help him some. I would say it was worth it, but not a miracle cure. At least for us. YMMV.
I am having similar issues with my ds 12. We are using Dianne Craft’s Brain Integration Therapy and she has lots of helpful info on her site. I found this last night and we are going to be trying it starting today. HTH
http://www.diannecraft.org/when-a-child-doesnt-remember-what-he-reads/Thanks apnews! I’ve heard of Diane Craft, but I never looked into this before. This could have described my son and I both! I was just telling my husband yesterday that I struggled with oral lectures in class as well as with textbooks starting in middle school, I suppose because that’s when school became less hands on and visual. Somehow I still managed to be in honor roll, but I never learned a thing in history because it seemed to just be a bunch of words. In college I had to write notes the whole entire time and try to capture as much of the lecture as possible so that later I could try to comprehend it. After college,I FINALLY learned to think in pictures while people are explaining things. Incidentally, I’m not dyslexic, but I think I have an APD.
So I had an idea that this was part of his problem, but I couldn’t verbalize it like Diane Craft did. Reading that article was like confirmation for me. Thank you. I just last night came up with a similar idea. But I like hers better, of course. Mine was to give him a comic strip notebooking page with lots of squares for drawing. I’d read and have him do the briefest sketch possible of that sentence, just an idea of the picture in his head. Then have narrate to me that sentence. Then continue this method sentence by sentence until it becomes easy, at which point I could start lengthening the amount I would read before he sketches. I like her idea better because it trains him to do it all in his head, which is what he needs to do.
Anyway, I was just getting on here today to find some more creative ideas, and I found this. So thank you. For some reason these responses aren’t being sent to my email.
Well, for my son, he can understand and learn from much harder books than he can narrate. There is the glitch for him between what it in his mind and what he can say or write. Your son could be different, I don’t know. My theory is that he gets what he gets from the harder books. The narration books are working on the skill of narration only. I don’t pick really high school level books – more like upper elementary to Jr. high level books. But I know he understands some of it because all of the sudden he will come out with a bit of information that he read that surprises me.
Older books have longer sentence structure that is harder for my son as well. I look for “newer” books that are simpler sentences and vocabulary.
I would say it depends on your son whether reading aloud to him or him reading it himself is better. We do both. Does your son read really well? If not I would either have him read them aloud to you or read them to him – depending on the book and maybe some of both. If he reads them silently and he doesn’t read well, that would be a bigger problem with understanding.
We also did Dianne Craft’s Brain Integration for a while year. It did help him some. I would say it was worth it, but not a miracle cure. At least for us. YMMV.
Dawn, no my son is similar. He does get some things from books which he can’t narrate. Just no proper names or dates or new terminology or details. Usually he just narrates the main idea and a few details. I used to think this was enough, but now that he is getting older, I really want him to get more of the content. Yet, I can definitely see your point as well.
I wonder if the brain has to mature enough to be able to follow along with pictures in the head, or if enough life experiences have to have been amassed in order to have the knowledge and vocabulary that makes this task easier? Like I said, I didn’t learn it until I was 26 or older. My vocabulary was terrible when I was younger,and I was ignorant of so many literary symbols, historical events, etc that help to give a person something to work with when creating a movie in the head.
I have seen my son improve a lot over the years. I think their brains need to figure out ways around their glitches. I personally am trying not to freak out not that he’s in high school. I know college isn’t likely to be in his future and he can only do what he can do. I’m trying not to push – well I do, but very gently.
I want to share one more thing I’ve done this year that seems to really be helping him with narration. We are reading a book – right now it is Star of Light- and then for every chapter he writes a 1-2 sentence summary of the chapter. He struggled with this at first, but is getting really good at writing pretty descriptive one sentence summaries. I am going to have him do this for awhile and then see if he can add a few details to it. Over time I’m hoping that he can do a page or two written narration. This seems to help because he can see the thinking process it takes. Otherwise his written narrations were…nothing, or he knew the story well and he tried to write almost everything. I’m looking for a summary with details. I’m hopeful he will be able to do this. I never expected he would get so good at the summaries. Just wanted to share that in case it might help you too. 🙂
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