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balancing needs of different personalities and learning styles
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I have 4 kids (4th, 1st, pre-k and 1yo). My 4th grader is really smart and most school things seem to come easy to him, both math and reading/narrating stuff. My 1st grader is SO different from him! She is a nature loving, outside girl. We haven’t gotten very far with math yet as she has been resistant. We have dabbled in narration since she turned 6 in December. We started 1st grade 2 weeks ago and I want to be more consistent with it, so I have 2 books that we are alternating reading (by day) where the focus is on narration so I read a small portion and have her narrate that part, then do another portion to narrate. We only get through a small bit of material, but the narrating is torturous! Then I have my pre-ker listening in and she is better at narrating than my 1st grader! I don’t ask pre-ker for narrations, but she is often busting at the seams to tell me about things we’ve read.
I guess I am just struggling with how do you know how to customize things for individual children who are so different. We are doing Miquon math after trying some math mammoth (4th grader uses math mammoth) and that seems to be going better for her. She loves drawing and like I said, outside and nature things. We are doing a daily nature walk with nature journal and she is enjoying that. I expect you guys may tell me to go back and do Aesop for narrations to make it easier. I can do that, but then I am just wondering, is there a point in reading books to her that she can’t/won’t narrate and doesn’t seem to retain anything from?
I know she is young and I just want school to be a pleasant experience all around, but I also want to appropriately challenge her. She is an advanced reader (7th grade level) so I know she is capable. Thanks!!
What are you having her narrate? Maybe something nature-ish? She’s probably grasping more than she can express in narration. Remember that narration is a learned skill that is really several skills in one:
– call to mind what was read
– decide what to talk about
– choose your words
– put what you want to say in order, esp. in the case of a story’s sequence of events
– speak
So even if current narrations are tiny know that she’s getting more out of the readings, but just like learning to read is usually a step by step, little by little skill to learn, so is narration.
One risk with reading a small amount to her before asking for a narration is that there isn’t a lot for her to talk about! This is one area I just really feel strongly about. It frustrated one of my kids to have me read a paragraph and then ask for a narration because chopping up the story that much meant he wasn’t able to get into the story and live, so he had very little to say. I found for him in particular it was better to read a page or two and ask him to share his favorite part, or ask what he would have done in a character’s place, or if he agreed with what a character did and why or why not, etc.
Your daughter sounds much like my oldest. She also read well early, loved to draw, loved being outside. She was also a very fast reader. She thought narration was the most ridiculous thing to do. She figured that since I had just read the story, there was nothing that she could understand or remember that I couldn’t, so she had nothing to tell.
2 things helped. First, we shared the narration. I would start off, telling the beginning of the story, and ask “then what?” When she stopped, I’d ask something like “and do you remember the part when…?” and give a bit more. By then we were telling a story together, and she would usually finish it off. It was a shared experience and didn’t feel so weird.
Second, she did a lot of picture narrations. I’d have her draw while she listened to the story, which kept her hands busy and her mind on the story. Then I’d ask her to tell me about the picture (as opposed to ‘tell me the story’.) Sometime I would jot down a few lines under the picture to tell what it was about. Then I’d have her tell me what happened after the events in her picture.
I think part of the problem was slowing down and staying focused on the story, which she could have read to herself much faster than I read aloud. Drawing helped with that. She still does other things, usually handicrafts, while she listens to our family read alouds.
As for the younger sister, you could have her draw a picture as well and give her a chance to tell about it. Or, make her part of the team when you are narrating together, but if necessary limit her to one event.
I don’t know the whole answer to your overall question about how to personalize. You just play around with different ideas until you find what works best for the group you have.
And yes, Aesop is a great place to start! So are fairy tales or other distinct stories, rather than books where each chapter continues the story. Not that you can’t use those books, but we found it easier to learn narration when we could focus on beginning, middle, end.
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