Submit your questions about narration!

Indicated above but wanted to add my vote on the last two posts.  I am struggling with how narration can work for me unless I, personally, am reading all of my children’s school readings.   (A major challenge when there are four children, grades 4, 6, 8, 10 — all with different assigned independent readings.  Not my family/ages at this moment, but will be soon enough)

On this, I have three questions:

1.  How do I comment on, ask questions, and encourage more in-depth thinking on a middle school/high school narration (where my child read the material independently), when I am not closely familiar with the reading material?  (either I read it long ago, or not at all) 

2.  How do I grade a narration or encourage deeper thinking on the content (middle/high school years in particular), when I truly don’t know the difference between what my child included versus excluded from the reading material? (and given that one of my children has a major habit of skim reading)

which leads to…

3. Should I be using narration when I have not actually read the material personally?  Should I use narration, but use it alongside other methods such as assigning additional non-narrated materials/readings or a workbook/test sheet?  (again, in cases where I have not read the material).

Thanks, SCM!

How to encourage more indepth/detailed narration without “digging it out of them”?

We’ve been narrating for 4 years now and I don’t feel like I am getting good narrations from them.  I get “She went to that place and saw him.”  I can get a sentence or two out of a reading.  I know that they know more than that.  Also, I always get the queestion from them “Why do I have to tell it to you when you just read it?”  I read everything to them right now.  My oldest is not reading independently due to dyslexia, so she only gets in what I read.  My youngest did do some reading last year that was independent and she narrated those.