It took my older ds the whole year of practicing narrating in Beyond to get good at it, and now in PHFHG, he still can keep improving (as we all can with oral narration
). Narrating takes a good deal of time to develop as a skill, especially for little ones who just learned to read themselves. It's a lot to think of, and listening attentively is the first habit that needs to be developed. This habit is taking my middle busy boy son a longer time to develop, but I am trying to be patient.
In Beyond, oral narration is only done on Days 2 and 5 with the Storytime box. The number one way dc can be helped along with their narrations is to read small portions each day for them to narrate on. We got the Boy Interest Beyond Deluxe set for Storytime, so we only do 1 book for each month. This keeps the pages to a minimum. When we started Beyond, my ds was quite young, so I'd have my ds narrate after I'd read only a page or 2, and then I'd read the rest of the pages after that - not expecting him to narrate on those. I gradually increased the number of pages he narrated on, until he narrated on all that I read - but I still kept the pages to a minimum each day.
On Day 2, the goal for the parent is to model narration. So, on that day, I remind myself that the goal is mostly for me to do the modeling, not for the child to show he's already got it. That helps me remember the child is supposed to be learning from me, not showing he's proficient at it yet.
On Day 5, the goal is for dc to practice narration by retelling the story in a variety of ways. This is the day I try to encourage growth in their personal narrating skills. The first goal is to have dc be able to simply tell something from the beginning, the middle, and the end of what was read. So, if their narration is 3 sentences, and they fit the beginning, middle, and end of the story - that's a good narration at the beginning of Beyond. Dc's narrations are SHORT, and I mean SHORT, to begin with. However, short and making sense is better than long and jumbled up.
So, shorter is better to begin with when it comes to narrations.
It helped my ds for me to stick to this rule... several compliments about what he did right, and 1 thing to get better at. That's it - along with modeling good narrations and being very encouraging and cheerful about narrating overall - that really helped my ds. So much more so than when I got frustrated with him, or interrupted him with something he'd missed, or told him no compliments and 3 things to work on at the end - all things I've been guilty of doing at one time or another during narrations
that did absolutely nothing to help him get better at them. I just want to encourage you that narrating is a very beginning level skill for ages 6-8 in Beyond, and when you get to Bigger Hearts, there will be more direction about how to get more serious about it as that is the second year of dc doing the skill. HTH!
In Christ,
Julie
