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New and need clarification
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We are new to this whole narration idea, but excited about the skills it teaches. I’ve read through a lot of questions and I just want to get some feedback if you have a moment.
We are doing the first History year and 106 Days of Creation, both requiring narration. I have a 2 year old (just playing), 5 year old (semi listening), and 7 year old daughter (super detailed) as well as my 8 almost 9 year old niece.
So far, I have learned that if I have the older 2, or at least the oldest, drawing while I am reading, they/she hears that one clip that they chose to draw and nothing else. Also, the oldest needs much shorter sections at a time.
Actually, my niece seems to be unable to recall anything. She is capable, mind you, quite intelligent and is known as “ratchet jaw” so talking is not a problem. She can tell you details from years gone by, and has an amazing memory. Yet, as soon as I start reading, she’s gone. I’ve watched her face shut down. And we’re reading things like the biblical account of Noah, so it isn’t new information. And I found today that the same goes for sentences in spelling. They were read once, were only 6 words long or so and she only caught a few words here and there.
I have started reading shorter sections, like I said. That has helped just a little. I might try having the girls record themselves later, but I think I need to figure out retention first?
I’m so new I’m not even sure what my quesiton is! And she is a completely new student for me and her past instructor is not available to talk with, nor did they do narration. Here’s an attempt at questions to clarify all the above rambling:
How do you tell the difference between retention problems, attention problems and “I just don’t care” problems?
What do you do if they refuse to listen/continually don’t pay attention even though they should be able to?
What do you do when they only remember the last line you read?
What do you do when they add stuff from chapters you haven’t read yet, or say things like “God did this because He thought this” when He didn’t actually say that (nor is it necessarily an accurate interpretation)?
thanks!
In general I like when my kids bring in other things they have read because it shows they are making connections. But if it is way off topic or if she is saying incorrect things I would correct her. I try not to be too critical during narration but when a kid does a poor job I will ask another one if they can add anything. And praise, praise, praise when they do do well, even just slightly better.
Others probably have better ideas but for the attention thing I wonder if she is not an auditory learner. At almost 9, can she read something on her own and narrate it? I don’t mean do it all the time but if she does better that way it might give you a clue to how she learns. One of my kids loves to see the words as I read; maybe that would help if she is more visual?
Nebby
I would ask for narration after each paragraph. If you get a good response, wait a bit and then stretch it out to two paragraphs, etc.
I am teaching my 9 year old and her 10 year old best friend one day a week (Beautiful Feet Geography). The first week or two, the 10 year old struggled with narration. I guess she had never had to do it before. My 9 ypo may have been helpful in modeling the skill a bit. We also slowed down and asked for narration after every paragraph – and after 5 weeks, what a difference! She is narrating so well now, and her mind is grasping on to details much better. Her recall from week to week is better, too! I do have the girls sit on either side of me as I read so they can silently read along with me if that helps them.
Best wishes!
Thanks ladies, I finally got a chance to come back and read your responses!
The improvement after 5 weeks is encouraging. Today was a mess. Even though we read one paragraph at a time, she couldn’t really recall anything. It had been a while since we had read, so I demonstrated what I’m looking for in narration to review. Then we read paragraph one and the 7 year old remembered everything and 9 year old literally could only repeat what the 7 year old said. So I asked her to write down a word here and there as I read the next paragraph. She seems to have only heard the first line. It was something like “it is not easy for even well educated people doing reasearch to know the dates” and the only thing she wrote down for the entire paragraph was “it is not easy of even for the royal people.” Royal people was something we had talked about in the paragraph before with the use of the word Monarch.
So I had her read it to me so I could jot down words and phrases to show her what I meant. I did that, shared the words, narrated it back and then asked her if she could tell me what she learned. She only remembered that Cesar was talked about. Even she recognized that after hearing something 2x and reading it once, she had nothing to recall. I tried to encourage her, reminding her that this is new and we are both figuring things out, but we were both discouraged for sure.
Do you think if I continue working through it we’ll get there eventually? I’m managing not to panic about how long everything is taking, but history is already 5 days a week and if we take 3 just to read one chapter of one book, we’ll never get anywhere! My 7 year old is enjoying the book, so I don’t want to stop just because it is hard on the other.
I think I’ll continue to have her work on writing words down and perhaps reading silently along with me. Although, hard to do both right?
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