Older children, reading books, narrations

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  • April 9, 2011 at 4:03 pm
    Rene
    Participant

    Thus far I have failed to train my oldest daughter to narrate properly.  She does fine when she retelling a story she loves, like Hank the Cowdog.  But for some of her school books she will just say something like “It was a story about a frog.”  I am going to look over the article for narration ideas to try and fix this problem. 

    The question I have is about her own free reading time. I know I am not to require narrations for that.  The problem is that she flies through books so fast, because she skims, that I know she is not getting the full story.  If a scene gets boring, or starts to get too descriptive of the scenery, she will skip it until something catches her interest.  I recently read an amish fiction trilogy and it took me over two weeks to get through it all – now granted, I’m a mom who doesn’t have as much time as a child to sit and read.  But I decided to let my daughter read it and she “read” all 3 books in one weekend.  She got the main “gist” of the story, but she missed so much in the process!

    So, do I leave her alone in this personal reading area? As we work on slowing down with school books and narrating, will her free reading get better and more deep?

    April 9, 2011 at 7:51 pm
    art
    Participant

    How old is she??

    I haven’t trained my kids to narrate well either. My 12 yr old listens intently and then tells back main events without any connections. She does have a hard time making connections of all kinds though.

    I don’t think I’d have her reading to herself if I wanted her to get more out of it. But I guess that would depend on wether she’s 10 or 17!

    You could also both read a book and discuss together some of the more interesting or subtle aspects of it. Maybe that would interest her.

    My kids haven’t gotten to where they appreciate narrating yet. But most of their personal reading books are ones I/we have read and I can ask with sincere interest where they are in the story and talk about it.

    I can see that you might not want her to have the habit of flying through books, because that could carry over to books she needs to not fly through. Maybe someone who is better at habits can help with that. (That’s not my strong suit-yet).

    I don’t know if that all was very helpful, but I hope so.

    April 9, 2011 at 10:14 pm
    sheraz
    Participant

    I started having mine read it out loud to me even though it was for her.  I just told her that I would love to hear the story but couldn’t read myself right now because I was working on the laundry, dishes, dinner, etc.  I really did it so that she would have to slow down!  Then we could have conversations without “narrations” because it was a for fun book.  =)  It seems to help get her attention into the details a bit.

    April 10, 2011 at 4:06 pm
    Rene
    Participant

    Art, she is 13.

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