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retention without narration…is it possible?
- This topic has 8 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 12 years, 2 months ago by
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So, it’s been a VERY frustrating school day – and this probably sounds more desperate than it needs to be, but I just have NO IDEA how much information is sticking!!!! My son is a first grader, turns 7 this spring. Narration has been slow, he’s made progress in this area, but extrememly slowly. I’m okay with slow progress, but what’s bugging me is that I can’t tell how much he’s learning in the meantime. How do I know when he’s not able to tell me via narration? Is any of this sticking at all? It’s really not a big deal if it doesn’t stick for literature, but it bothers me to think that Bible may be going in one ear and out the other! At least with Math and Beginning Reading I can tell, but everything else?
Here is our story with narrations: Our first term narrations were basicly non-exsistent, despite my best efforts (tried very short passages it was too disjointed for him). I decieded that narration needed to be a subject all it’s own for this term (term 2) so I cut other things our of our school day, and we do “Narration” as a subject, he doesn’t know the name – to him it’s Aseop’s Fable’s with a puppet. I read the story, he tells it back to the puppet on my hand. Puppet responding to his narration. This has been a huge help for the balking he was doing. His little sister is almost always ready to tell the puppet if he won’t which also motivates him. I’ve had him practice in other ways by on occaion having him dictate his own story to me (one he makes up himself) to see if that would help. I’ve also took turns with him during Bible writing down one or two scentance narrations. So, we’re trying! I just don’t know what else to do to help narration – except give it time.
Here’s my question: do I just keep giving narration time to develop and just accept not knowing exactly what he’s learning? Sometimes his learning comes out in play, of course, but ack! I’d really like to know more than the occaional detailed immination of bird flight! I’ve even begun to wonder if there is something more going on… does he have some sort of adutiory prossesing or rentetion problem or just a plain listenting problem? I can say something completely rediclious like, “Purple elephants eat orange flowers” and he can’t repeat what I’ve just said. When discplined he often has no idea what he’s been disclpined for when I ask him. “Why did you have to come inside, instead of staying outdoors?” “I don’t know” – I get this A LOT! (Unless it’s just become a default response on his part) He has no hearing problem, he can hear converations dh & I have from another room. Is it attention, does he just need to develop the habit of attention? His lessons are short, to the point, I don’t think they challenge him enough and he’s getting too used to “easy” without having to apply himself. Over the years, I heard Sunday school teachers, realatives and even swim lesson instructors say “He needs to listen more.”
So what am I dealing with really? I don’t know! And I don’t know how to tell how much he’s learning! When I look at how far we’ve come in our school books, except literature, it’s not far at all. We’re getting close to halfway through the entire school year. Is this just going to be a year that progress is slower? And how do I know what to plan for next year if I can’t tell what he’s learned this year??
Take a deep breath and relax. I’m sure everything is fine.
Your son is still very young and this is still quite new to him. Narration is not the easiest thing to learn, and for boys especially, it is difficult to sit and pay attention when there are other things that are more fun or more interesting. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. My 7 year old grade 2 student is extremely intellegent, flying through math, reading, spelling, etc at an alarmingly advanced rate, but still can’t narrate more than a sentence or two. He struggles A LOT with paying attention for any length of time. Now, this is our first year of homeschool. Is he retaining info? Yes, but how much? Hard to say, but I am not worried yet. I am training him to pay attention. Most everything that we are covering now will be covered again in some way over the coming years. The same is true for your son.
You mentioned that Bible was the subject that you are most concerned about. Don’t be. That is probably the subject you will go over and over more times than anything else. What exactly is it that you want him to learn from your lessons? How are you teaching this subject? Are you reading stories to him from a Children’s story book Bible? Bible is one subject that I hesitate to drill into them as a “school subject”. I prefer it to be part of life. Sharing our faith with our children, especially at this age, should be a natural part of every day life and should not be seen as something they “have to do” for school.
What other subjects are you struggling with? What are your goals for this year? Often we make the goal finishing the book, but I think a worthier goal at this age is establishing a character trait — start with attentiveness and move on to the next habit as each one is established.
Don’t give up and keep doing what you are doing. I am in the same shoes and know how hard it can be to not give up. My DD 7 just started to have some narration attempts (after working on it since August!) and I take every little bit she gives me with a lot of joy:). I took me a while to understand that narration might be very hard to learn for some children, but they WILL learn it. I think it is great if something learned comes out in play or unexpected situations! What more proof of “retention” could we ask for? I do not think it is less of a proof of retention then a perfect narration ;). I see it this way, it is one thing my DD telling me back the stories of the Exodus after a reading (which she was not able to do), but another when 2 month later as we are on a hiking trip (we live in the desert) out of the blueshe proclaims “I feel like the Isrealites wandering with Moses through the desert!”.
I really stink at requiring narrations. I’d rather just read. I know that we all remember better after telling about something, but it not that much fun to do unless it’s your own idea. And it’s REALLY hard. My kids are 9, 10, and 13 and the older one tells bare facts without much feeling, the next one just doesn’t know and the youngest only has some idea if it was a story we read. I mean it drives me crazy.
I was really worried about it til I asked my 18 year old college student if he remembers anything he learned in homeschool. He said maybe but he’s probably relearned at college what he knows now anyway. He was extremely good at homeschool; always ahead and knew everything. He graduated at 16, but he says he doesn’t remember that much. You know what neither do I. What I remember that I learned in school is all about skills.
So that’s what I’m going to worry about from now on (til high school at least). They need math skills, reading skills, writing skills, listening, cooking, cleaning, courtesy, etc. skills.
I’d like them to remember what we learn, and I’m sure they will some of it; but I can’t beat myself up if they don’t. I mean after all–I don’t remember any facts I learned when I was 10, except math facts! I hope that doesn’t sound like I’m giving up on teaching them knowledge too.
By the way your son sounds just like my 9 year old boy. Don’t worry too much.
Sorry if it sounds like I’m insane–I’ve been sick for a week!
You know, I think it’s ME as a teacher that’s wanting to know wether or not the material is retained… how else do I know when to go on to the next lesson? Obviously, math is self-explanitory, one moves on when that particular math concept or skill is mastered. Similar in reading. But the rest… I don’t require narrations in much at all, and if I hadn’t started doing it with Aseop’s Fables, it wouldn’t be happening period. I planned at the beginning of our school year to require narrations for Bible/History (we’re doing module 1) and Science – nothing else since it would be new. Well, I’ve dropped narrations out of science completely, tried switching books and/materials also. The subject matter is one he’s really interested in already – birds. Different books were no easier to narrate. As for Bible, I am doing module 1 and we use the Vos storybook Bible. (At times he’s literally sat on the edge of his seat wanting to know what happens next.) I’ve also stopped the Acient Egyptian history for the time being. Geography died months ago, except for looking at our world map occasionally. At this point I feel I need to keep Bible part of school for two reasons: with as busy as things are in my life, it’s the only way I’ve found to be consistent about reading it to my children and two I want to teach Bible as part of history. We do of course talk about our faith during everyday life. It has occured to me that Bible will be repeated more than any other subject, so the material will come around again and again… but it bothers me when he can’t seem to idenify who we’ve read about in Bible. Sometimes not the name or what happened to them – nothing. So was he listening at all? On the other hand, there are those moments like Christine mentioned, “look Mom, it’s the tower of Babel!”. I don’t think it’s too much to expect him to know something about the story we’ve just read.
It was just not a good school day, I should have probably posted tomorrow. Nothing seemed to be going well. A math concept previously learned was seemingly competely gone for our lesson today. The short vowel sounds, mastered months ago, evaoprated during reading. He asked “What is migration?” during science, we’ve been reading about it for over a week. Refused to narrate Aseop’s Fables until I had him act it out. And so on. I guess I asked my question, because I realized we’ve had many days/moments like these. (St. Nicholas is Christopher Columbus for example) And utlimately, I don’t know when to move on in our lessons. So maybe someone could tell me when do I go on to the next thing?
What if you changed up your narrations a bit. What if you:
had him draw a picture of something you read about
make a comic strip of the part you read about (stick figure – nothing fancy unless he wants to do it)
use legos (knex, lincoln logs, etc) to build a 3-D model of something you studied (my girls have done this for picture study as well as layouts for history)
act out a part that you read using simple puppets (craft sticks for handles and paper cut-outs glued to them)
The list is only limited by your imagination. Hope something from this helps you both.
~j.
It isn’t uncomon for younger kids to seem to understand things well one day, and look like it is a totally new concept the next. This is very common (and very frustrating for us parents!)
I also know that some people have children where this seems to be combined with food sensitivities, or other things like that – so keep that in mind….
I doubt this is much help, as I don’t quite know what to do myself (except just keep moving forward) but my 9yo has serious math recall issues, well, sometimes. Normally, his recall is very poor and his understanding of math seems completely mechanical and only within the context of the lessons. Then yesterday he surprised me with his ability to recall many math facts, quickly. I was pretty amazed (and proud of him). This has been a long hard road, but now I can see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.
Just wanted to encourage you to not give up (not that you are)…I think most kids remember one day, forget the next, which can be frustrating, but a part of the process.
I know what you mean. My daughter is like that. She is 5 1/2 though. However, she can’t recall something right after I told her. I mean seconds after I tell her. So, I am just praying and having her draw pictures to help her recall. I like the puppet idea though. That is great. I will have to steal this idea…. 🙂 Maybe this will help.
On another note my 8 yr old has a similar problem but he can remember the last 2 sentences I say and repeats just those two back to me. Exactly as I had said them. Scary! Especially since he only remembers those two….LOL 🙂
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