The BHFHG Appendix was helpful to me because I am also one to lean toward comprehension questions, and you're right, I've found that defeats the purpose of oral narrations. It helped me to read through Narration Tips: Teacher's List in the Appendix a bunch of times, just to remind myself of my role. I also went through the How to Narrate: Student's List with my ds, so he knew what to expect. I told him we'd think of the list as something to work through 1 thing at a time until he showed he did well with one, and then we'd get to move on to the next one. We just started with #1 on the list, and focused on that until he was doing it well, and then we moved on to #2, etc. It sounds like your ds may be on #4 and/or #5:
#4: Be ready to tell all you can remember when the reading is done.
#5: Retell what was read with as much detail as you can. There is not one right way to do this.
I explained that there are many ways to see what he remembers. For example, I could expect him to write a few pages after he reads each day to show me he understood it - however, I preferred having him orally tell me since he had lots of other writing to do for school (this thought made him deeply appreciate ORAL narrations)
. You can show your ds the list and tell him that he's on #4 and telling ALL he can remember amounts to more than 1 sentence now.
I love showing them THE BOOK, like I didn't make this up - it's really in the HOD book and must be done!
(I'm putting the focus on you, Carrie
)
Here are a few of the narrating activities from Beyond that are helpful when beginning oral narrations as well. Day 2 focused on the
modeling of narrations. Here are some examples of those:
*The parent models narrating by retelling what was read that day, telling the most important points and adding details from the story without overwhelming the student.
*The parent narrates first. After a short time, tap the student and say "Your turn". The student narrates a bit and after a short time taps the parent and says "Your turn", etc.
*The parent writes a retelling of the story, leaving blanks in place of key words. Key words can be names, places, descriptive words, etc. Work with the student to fill in the missing words.
Day 5 focused on practicing narration by retelling the story in a variety of ways. Here are some examples of those:
*Prompt the students with these questions: What happened at the beginning of the part we read today? What happened during the middle of the part we read today? What happened at the end?
*The student orally retells the reading while mimicking the character's actions. Parent prompts the student after each action by asking, "What happened next?"
*Guide students to retell today's reading by saying, "Tell me what you remember from today's story. Prompt students as needed to include important events (i.e. What about ____? How about _____?)
In BHFHG, the student should be moving toward being able to orally narrate well without so much guidance and prompting, but if your child didn't do Beyond or didn't narrate much before beginning Bigger Hearts, the above Beyond activities are great for spurring them on to orally narrate well. You could always get the Beyond manual and work through Day 2's and Day 5's activities using the Bigger readings if you'd like that guidance and funds allow. Otherwise, just doing some of the above guidance and modeling at the beginning and pairing that with the Bigger Hearts Appendix ideas would work well too. Oral narrating is definitely a marathon, not a race - and it takes a lifetime to get good at it - as evidenced by many of us MOMS needing to get better at it (I'm thinking of myself here
) too!
HTH!
In Christ,
Julie