Retention

[ktwensel]

Do you feel your kids retain a lot of what is taught? We have had trouble with this in the past. It seems that I would read, and read, and read...and then ask them something and they would just look at me? Crazy!

We have just started to do narration and I think this will help a lot.

Karen

[GinainMD]

I have definitely felt like something that I have read to my dc went in one ear and out the other! I've found that this is primarily when the selections that I chose were quite long. Love, love, love that HOD keeps the readings short and sweet and I don't have to guess how much is too much or not enough. Just my experience. I agree that narration should help. I know that it has here.

[mrskturner]

My kiddos are defiantly retaining with HOD. Even my daughter who is severely dyslexic. Retention use to be a huge problem for her. We ALWAYS use narration afterwards, this makes a world of difference. We use after everything we read.

[my3sons]

HOD keeps the readings short in keeping with CM style of education. Likewise, HOD has dc respond to their reading ALWAYS in some form or fashion. Oral narrations are started early on in HOD, and written narrations are added in PHFHG on up. By doing all that is planned in the HOD guides, I can quickly see if my dc took in what they read or what I read. I have heard my dc give narrations of HOD books read over a year ago, and they've been pretty accurate. I am a firm believer in narrations - Miss CM was sure on to something big there! Children cannot guess their way through HOD's follow-up activities to readings. There are no "helps" for guessing, like there are when dc do multiple choice, true/false, close passage/word bank, etc. type follow-ups. When you ask a child to narrate, he has to do it all based upon his own memory. This has been a huge help in encouraging retention! My child's first narrations needed drastic improvement. I could relate as one day I did the Storytime read aloud and noticed after I'd finished I was supposed to model oral narration on what I'd just read. I couldn't remember a stitch of it! I'd been mentally making my "to do" list as I read. I had to tell my ds I needed to read it again as I hadn't exercised the habit of attention in the proper way. Anyway, I think you'll find HOD is about as strong on retention as a program can be, because it's based on CM's excellent research, and that research is put into practice every day right within our HOD guides' plans.

In Christ,
Julie