Sometimes narration needs help
When I first asked our oldest son to give a narration on our first ever homeschool read aloud, he just stared at me. He was/is a voracious reader. I thought maybe I just needed to explain what narration was and we’d assuredly be set.
Still, blank stare.
I gave my narration about the reading, assuming it’d inspire him to expand and elaborate on the reading.
Eyes wide open, “mom, it was good.”
My newbie homeschooling mom fears welled up. I was convinced I was doing something wrong. And I was.
“It stultifies a child to bring down his world to a 'child's' level.”
-Charlotte Mason
When we first started narration (including me understanding what it even was), we struggled. Mother and child both struggled. We got there, but it included lots of trial and error. Most importantly, the skill of good narration was the bridge to excellent reading comprehension as well as good writing and good storytelling. Being able to recall previous readings, absorb the new reading, share the leading thoughts, and eventually its deeper thought provoking meanings and applications, leads to being able to look inward and express our deeper thoughts. Narration has been a catalyst that has led to some of the best conversations in our home.
Knowing the struggle that we experienced is likely not unique to us, I thought I’d share some ideas that were a huge help for us.
So, what do you do if narration is new or if it’s a struggle? Don’t fret. With a few tweaks to your approach, you’ll likely witness the struggle become a strength.
There were two distinct things that helped us:
First, we evaluated what was on our bookshelves. The quality of literature on our shelves consisted of board books and a indulgent splattering of twaddle (to learn more about how we choose books for our library, read this post). I didn’t immediately remove all twaddle-like books out of our home. Just as new books came in, the twaddle was donated out of our home.
The second help we utilized was a narration jar. Our narration “jar” was actually just narration prompts on index cards. With babies and toddlers underfoot, we needed simple and portable and easy to hide from toddler-sized hands. On the cards were prompts that help keep narration fun and fresh. They are especially handy if you have a struggling or neurodiverse learner(we’ll get to that in a bit). Another benefit of the narration cards is that you can customize as needed and have narration prompts that work best for your child’s learning style. If you aren’t sure of your child’s learning style, never fear. Teaching multi-sensory style can help you identify their favorite learning style. Teaching multi-sensory style also helps the strengthen their not so favorite learning styles. (I should probably write more about that soon, how utilizing as many learning styles at once strengthens neurological pathways. It’s a wonder to witness how quickly it works.) Making narration as multi-sensory as possible helps make the learning cement quicker-plus it’s more fun(this is the part that the kiddo enjoys the most).
If you do end up trying narration cards, I recommend you as the teacher picking out which narration card to utilize. Use them on a rotation and observe which activity seems to resonate with your child. Occasionally, let the child pick which narration activity them would like to use. Keeping an eye out for the style of narration your student gravitates toward gives key insight to their dominant learning style.
One of our kiddos really enjoyed drawing his narrations out comic strip style. We printed free blank comic strip printables and made those available to make the narrations more enjoyable for him. Once he found narration fun, he really got into the whole narration aspect. On days he drew his comic strip narration, he gave an oral narration paired with the comic book style drawing. Eventually, these comic book style narrations had word bubbles. That led to a paraphrased written play scripts of the readings. He graduated and went to college, can have meaningful academic conversations, and write college level writings.
I never could have imagined on day one that we’d get there. I thought I was failing him on day one. Having a handful of index cards with some scribbled ideas for alternative narrations made the difference.
If struggling, these are definitely worth trying.
So, if the struggles are because of mom exhaustion(no shame, it’s totally real), because of learning differences(struggling or late readers or any smorgasbord of struggles that our children may be facing), super busy home with lots of kiddos underfoot(it’s a season, enjoy every minute of it), making the learning environment as optimized as humanly and financially possible matters.
This is why I’m such a huge cheerleader for multi-sensory learning/teaching. Multi-sensory learning works for multiple learning styles simultaneously, optimizes primary learning styles, strengthens secondary and tertiary learning styles, cements learning quickly, physically gets energy out for busy, active learners. It also allows the teacher to teach to multiple individuals that may have differing primary learning style choices. Narration cards decrease decision fatigue/overwhelm for mom, making it more likely that multi-sensory strategies will be utilized.
They are multi-sensory by design.
They work for almost all children.
They don’t take up a lot of space and can be easily hidden from climbing younger siblings if needed.
They aren’t expensive( no reason to spend money on the elaborate if simple works).
Give it a try, stick with it for a few months, term, or semester.
Let me know what you think.
To access the Charlotte Mason inspired narration cards, click on any picture above that shows the cards or click here. If any issues getting the file to open, email me through contact form and we will make sure to get them to you.
