Scheduling Oral Narrations?

[ArtsyMommy]

How do you ladies schedule in the oral narrations into your day? I will have 3 doing Resurrection to Reformation this year, plus I have younger children I homeschool, so I'm wondering how the children can do their oral narrations without 1)interrupting me doing school with the little ones and 2)forgetting what they were going to say before they can say it.

[MelInKansas]

I will watch this post and see if anyone has a good way they do this or keep track of it. For us, either it interrupts what others are doing, or it gets put off until I am meeting with that DD again. The oral narrations are on a certain day of the unit though, so you could try to time it, if you were good at keeping track of what day of the unit you were on (ours changes usually because we do a co op, though the 4 day weeks should be the same each week) then you could schedule a time for the oral narration and tell the child to do the reading as close to that meeting time as possible.

[Gwenny]

I have two doing RtR this year. We have only done unit 1. I decided to try to have it somewhat scheduled but it will still be interrupting-just I will be a little more aware of when the interruption will be. There are only a few throughout the week so I think it will be okay. I guess you do have it times 3!! My girls have their own guides but are sharing resources. I have it scheduled out what order they do the boxes and I also put a time in there. Not sure how the times will line up yet as it is somewhat a guess at this point. I used the suggested times on the board but I added a little time for my one that is pretty slow. I got a calendar this year with 30 minute time slots from 7am-7pm that I absolutely LOVE! I put the times on my schedule of my guess as to when they will come to me--which is right after reading because they struggle with remembering if it isn't right away. I might make them wait just a minute or two to get to a good stopping point with my others. They are at different times so it won't be a long interruption to the other child. My boys will actually wish it was a longer interruption!!

[acts29stl]

I have two in MTMM and 1 in CTC. When I meet with the one in CTC is when he does his oral narration. He has it read already and while I check his other work he looks over the material again and then narrates. For the older two, we have been going HOD from the beginning so they are used to doing narrations when I'm ready. I give them a 5 minutes heads-up so they can look over what they need to narrate. Then they narrate separately. I usually have one narrate when I'm making lunch or dinner and one narrate during our meeting time together. If your child needs to narrate right after reading the material and it isn't a convenient time for you, you could have them narrate into a recording device. Then you could listen to it with them later and go over it with them.

[Gwenny]

The recording device is a great idea. The problem for me is that I never remembered to go back and listen to it.

[MomtoJGJE]

I listen to them when I get a chance. Mine have tried to pull the "I don't remember" card, but after making them go back and read it again, they decided that it was much easier just to pay attention and actually remember what they read. The narrations are for them to make connections and actually remember the history and science they've learned. So forgetting is not an option here

[Gwenny]

That's a good point about the forgetting. I think with my older daughter, there is no way she could remember, she barely can do any of it anyway, but the 13 yo--I might start doing that later this year. She has some issues with being scattered and forgetting, etc. I'm also taking her the middle of this month to get tested. I'm curious to find out what is a real struggle and what is a "laziness". Unless something pops up on the testing, later in this guide I will not be so careful to let her do it immediately.

[my3sons]

We have a set time I meet with each ds (i.e. 10 AM Riley, and 11 AM Wyatt). They time it so they read their book or review it if they read it earlier, right before I meet with them, and we do the oral narration first. I got this idea from Carrie, and it works great! I too like them recording it, but I too struggle with listening to it later. So, for me, it's been better to do it first thing when I meet with them, after they've had time to do independent work. For what it's worth, CM actually required students to wait to give their oral narrations when they were older (as in the teenage years), as 'holding the oral narration' in their minds for a length of time later than directly after the reading was the next step up in the skill. Sometimes, students were asked to narrate on a subject weeks later. For now though, narrating right after the reading or giving them time to refresh their mind before narrating, is the way we're finding success with it. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

[ArtsyMommy]

Thank you so much for the great ideas, everyone!