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For those of you who are like me and teaching more than one student I have a question about oral narrations. Do you have your students come to you immediately after finishing their reading to do their narration or do you "schedule" a time during the day for them to come? I was just letting them come whenever they finished to do it but that means constantly being interrupted for a narration when you are working with another child. Is it too much to ask them to wait and remember the information and do it later or does it need to be done right away?

I usually call them over to me when I have a minute to spare. Sometimes it is right after they read the assignment and sometimes it is within the hour. I try not to let it go past an hour's time so they don't forget. That is just how it works out in our family of four guides!

I am asking my oldest who is reading mostly on her own to jot down a couple of notes if she needs to just so that when she does get to narrate, then she has a couple of reminders and she narrates well.

When they first begin independent reading that will require a narration, usually in Preparing, I have had them come to me right away. I will do my best to stop what I am doing right away. It may be that the independent reader has to wait a minute or two before I get to a stopping place with another child, but it's basically right after the reading. Once i think they are doing well enough with that (rather it's one day in or several weeks), we move to doing it with a little bit of a gap, but still within 30 minutes to an hour usually, when I'm moving from one "mom" task to another. Once my kids have hit RtR (I think---for sure by RevtoRev), we have just incorporated our narration times into the meeting time, which may be several hours after their reading. They do have about a 5-10 minute warning that I will be with them, and of course they can thumb back through if they'd like. This has worked well for us.
Angie

I wondered this same thing, so I did a little digging years' back. Charlotte Mason said it is important to have dc narrate right away when they are learning to narrate. Having them wait to narrate is actually an upper level skill she encouraged after they were quite good at narrating. So, for my youngest ds beginning to learn very basic oral narration skills after I read him his Storytime books for LHFHG, I always have him narrate right away (which is easy to do because I just read it to him. ) For my middle almost 10 yo ds in CTC, I try to let him narrate right away upon finishing his reading by scheduling my teaching time with him right after he has read. But, sometimes if I'm busy, I tell him to take 5 minutes to gather his thoughts for his upcoming narration (usually because I have 5 minutes of something to finish up with another child). For Wyatt who is 13 yo and doing MTMM, he rarely narrates right after finishing his reading. I just have him narrate to me when we are meeting for his midpoint meeting time. Sometimes he'll ask for a few minutes to gather his thoughts before he begins, and he might flip through the book to get his bearings, but then he's good to go. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

Thank you all !