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Modified Narration
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Hello Everyone! I have a DD 6 with some auditory processing problems. She has a hard time understanding anything without visual clues. I have her at K level this year and I’d like to start “training” her in narration in preparation for our CM education to begin in full next year. I have started doing what I told her is called, “Tell Me A Story” game (she LOVES games). I read a picture book to her and then have her tell me the story back, page by page, using the pictures as reminders. Do you think this is a good way to start or am I creating a dependence on pictures? Anyone else with a child like this? It’s taken almost a year to get her to (almost) count to 20. She can’t remember the days of the week in order, our phone number, the names of basic shapes, etc. She has made some progress, but it’s been slow.
Thanks for any advice or input!
Cheryl
I don’t know much about narration, but I am currently taking a class in reading development. Retelling using pictures is part of the process of learning to read, but eventually children can read without pictures. Otherwise, how could we read Jane Austen, for example? I don’t see how using the pictures would hurt anything. When she has mastered this skill, you can begin weaning her off of it or have her make puppets or use flannelboard pieces or something.
Karen
Cheryl, my youngest has processing disorders too (she’s on the autism spectrum), and we have modified things to include more visuals for her. For example, I’m setting up a felt-figures scene for her to look at while I read the Bible story. That has really helped her. She’s 11 now but didn’t really start narrating until last year. You can read more about her progress on my IntentionalParents site.
So, yes, feel free to do what works. Teach the child. But I do want to encourage you with the fact that even during those years that Hannah couldn’t narrate, she was comprehending a lot of the books I read to her. Now that she is able to communicate better, she continually surprises me by referring to something that was in those previous books. I thought she was just enduring the readings, but the ideas are, in fact, “in there”!
Oh! an idea just popped into my head. I wonder if you could make the transition gradually by reading a story without pictures but one that has a lot of potential for drawing the action. Maybe read a paragraph or two and have her draw what happened, then read a couple more, and draw a picture for that. At the end of the short story, see if she can put all her pictures in order and retell the story using those. That exercise might pave the way for her to eventually see those pictures in her head as she listens and be able to make the transition to a similar mental process, rather than increasing a dependency on the book having pictures. Just an idea.
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