Need some tips for narration...

[lissiejo]

My daughter is a young 7 and doing fabulous in everything she is studying in Bigger at full speed...except narration. I am aware this is a growing skill that has to be learned, but I'm struggling to help her learn how to narrate. If I ask her leading questions she gets somewhere, but often times the things she brings out from the reading are the really obscure stuff. In science today we read from Science in Colonial America. The portion was only about a page and a half total and the only thing she could recall for narration without my prompting her was that the doctors used to bleed their patients and it made them weaker. There was a lot of other really interesting stuff in there! She loves both history and science so I don't think it's an issue of her mind wandering or anything. She can even recall stuff we've read later on in the day and talk to me about it, but it's like she freezes when it's time to do a narration.

I'm okay with her growing into narration. I'm just not sure how to go about doing that. Not being familiar with this type of learning (I'm such a dolt that it took me 3 years of using HOD to realize this was Charlotte Mason style!) I just don't know how to help her. We're following the tips, both teacher and student, and I have her review them frequently. I've also modeled narration to help her understand it better. I'd love any practical advice for how to help her in this area!

[Tansy]

Have you started by reading out the tips for narration in the index for the kids? Maybe even posting them in your school room will help.

My one daughter really struggles with narration due to her audio processing and short term memory issues. Often I can get the whole story out of her at dinner time when we would struggle for 20 minutes if I ask for it right after we read it.

Some things that have helped us at various times of our life:

Mom drawing a stick figure drawing along with the story and letting the child use it as a memory trigger to do narration.
Child drawing while mom reads. (one drawing or in cartoon boxes)
Stopping every page and asking for a narration on what was just read, Mom writes down what child says verbatim (this is usually hilarious) and child uses it at the end to do narration. This is especially helpful for kids who can't keep the story in order in their mind.
Stopping when you notice the glazed over look and bringing them back into focus, by a gentle touch on the leg, or just plain ol asking them to come back to earth.
Therapuddy given to child to fidget with, while mom reads. This can often occupy the brain enough to focus on the story.
Mom models a good narration on even days before asking the child to narrate, and Mom models good narration after the child narrates on the odd days.
Have fun reverse roles have the child ask you for a narration and you mess it up big time, if the child knows the story they will not let you get away with it.

No good narration given due to poor attitude, child is required to reread on their own and submit a paragraph to mom before play time.

[lissiejo]

Thank you for all those practical tips! Some I am implementing, like the narration tips page and the gentle touch to bring her back around, but others were new! I used the drawing a picture idea last year with Beyond and she loved that, but would tend to become so absorbed in her picture she'd forget to listen in I really like the idea of writing down after a page what she says.

Today I told her we were going to try something new and had her read aloud the history to me. I helped her with a few harder words, but her narration improved leaps and bounds! She remembered more details and seemed to get the whole picture better. She doesn't have any processing issues and is a bit advanced for her age in a lot of areas so I think this is just a matter of practice and she's afraid to get it "wrong". She has perfectionist tendencies and just quits if she feels intimidated or doesn't understand something. We're working through that and I assure her there is no wrong narration. I've been hesitant to give her much feed back except positive stuff because of this, but I think I may need to guide her more.

Thanks again!