Another Narrating Question

After narrating for 3 years this is how I do it and my children narrate beautifully. I don’t “correct” them per say, I ‘redirect’ them. If they are referring to something that didn’t exist in that particular section, I do stop them. Telling them to focus, I give them a key word at the place where they went astray to ‘jump start’ their memory, so to speak. Then they move along fine-that addresses your #1.

I question at the beginning when I ask them to tell me what it was about, but not during. At the end, I ask the child whose turn it wasn’t “Is there anything you would like to add?”. Asking questions to get specifics basicly contradicts what you’re trying to do.

As for your #2, age six is at the begining of training in narration. It is best to only start a child at that age with about 2-3 sentences, max, then say “so what was that about from the beginning?” or “tell me what that was about from the beginning”, or something along those lines.

You shouldn’t be adding anything to their narration; they will become dependant upon you to do that and it will only get worse as they want you to give them the info. instead of using their own brains to retreive the content. You shouldn’t repeat the passage.

As for your#3 problems there could be a few reasons. So may I ask you some questions to clarify?

#1-How old are all your children? #2-How long have you been using narration? #3-what books are you using for narration? #4-Have you been working intentionally on the attention habit? #5-What time of day and after which subjects do you have narrations?”

For #4, talk to them beforehand to not say “Welllll” It’s as bad as saying “uhhhh” before a sentence or the horrible cultural addition of “like” into every sentence these days multiple times! It’s a habit of not thinking before speaking; that must be stopped. When my children get into a habit of using a word, I immediately cut them off (perhaps with a finger going up or a sound emanating from me , as in a quick “no”or something- just choose something short and relatively non-disruptive)and have them start over without using whatever word it is they need to withdraw. But inform them ahead of time that you going to do___ to help them break this habit. THey must think about what they’re going to say before they speak.

HTH a little and hopefully can help you more if you choose to answer the questions.

Rachel

Just wanted to jump in here and suggest that you break up the two narrating subjects rather than do them back to back. Try doing a narrating subject, then go use a different part of the brain and body — like math or copywork or picture study or something else — and come back to a narrating subject later. This strategy really helps with developing the habit of attention, because it doesn’t over-fatigue one part of the brain, thus making it easier to pay attention.