What about boys who don't really "narrate" but rather "memorize" a passage

[74Heaven]

My 4th born son has done this since he was about 5 or 6 with SOTW and other chapter narrations? Rather than summarize what happened, he just "quotes" back the story. This is especially noticable when I ask comprehension questions. Often, he is almost dictating whole paragraphs and half-pages? He does have a detail-oriented mind; likes mechanical and engineering type things...

 

My first 3 daughters didn't do this. Then, this boy came along. And now, his little brother, age 8 now does the same thing.

 

I am just wondering basically, "do other kids do this?" " I mean, I know it is auditory, but is this normal? Is it related to gender?

 

Just a strange question? And is there something I should be doing other than encouraging him to continue to pick out and articulate in his own words, with expanding his vocabulary, the main plots, ideas, character summaries, etc?

 

I have been wondering about this for a few years???

 

Btw, he is very bright and no learning or any other difficulties, the youngest boy has a very slight stuttering problem sometimes... I mean, this isn't like a noticable personality quirk.

lisaj, mom to 5

Edited November 11, 2010 by 74Heaven
just a note

[Kuovonne]

My 7 year old daughter does the same thing. So, yes, other kids do it and it's not gender specific. Is it "normal?" I don't know.

 

I've come to the conclusion that DD "narrates" by quoting back the passage because (1) memorizing is effortless for her, and (2) identifying main ideas and summarizing is incredibly difficult for her, especially in non-fiction.

 

I'll be watching this thread to see what ideas other folk come up with.

[Sara in WA]

This is where I've found great help with WWE. It really does break down the narration from the very beginning stage of "What is the one thing you remember from this passage" to more advanced stages of narrating an entire passage. Maybe looking through that text might help or maybe adding it WWE to your school work?

[74Heaven]

Sara, we do WWE daily with the younger boy; as often as i can fit it in with the older (just turned 11yo) boy.

Love it too! They are actually pretty good at narrations but I do have to encourage them cut down the info to main points.

Edited November 11, 2010 by 74Heaven
slight error

[silliness7]

My oldest child did this. I didn't really know how to deal with it at the time. My younger dc are using WWE and it is wonderful at teaching how to give a narrative summary. Although I don't do it exactly how she does it at times. I kind of mesh together things I learned from IEW Unit III and Teaching the Classics.

 

For a story summary I ask my dc to give me one sentence that tells who the story is about with a very short 1-2 word description. Then another sentence that tells what they want or what they are having a problem with. The last sentence then is how they solved their problem. Sometimes either the problem or the solution will take up 2 sentences. Sometimes the passage lends itself to a 4th sentence to give the story a proper finish if the resolution was particularly memorable or something. I very rarely allow 2 sentences for the introduction. That's usually not where the meat of the story is but the author can spend quite a bit of time setting the stage and it's very tempting for my dc to get bogged down in the details of the introduction. So we shoot for 3 -4 sentences with our WWE passage and also for our SOTW reading.

 

I also work with my 5th and 3rd graders to summarize their literature books this way. And because a novel is much more involved than a 2 page story that one can be about 6-7 sentences. The amount of discussion we have to have to boil the story down to 6-7 sentences is extraordinary. But it really enhances the story experience, for me anyway. I don't want to presume upon my children but I just like having a good lit discussion that feels like it landed somewhere. :001_smile:

 

I did not do this with my one that gave memorized narrations so I don't know how that would have affected him. But boy I sure wish I knew then what I know now. Ahhh the guinea pig. :lol:

[~Jo]

I seem to remember SWB saying in one of her audio lectures (I have them all - so can't remember which one, but probably one of the writing ones) that you did not want them to recite back all of the story to you. What you wanted them to learn to do was to find the most important thing in the reading. I'll try to figure out exactly what that was, but I'm pretty sure I remember her saying that many children have a hard time later on figuring out what is important and what is not.

[sagira]

My ds will pick what he thinks is the most interesting and important, but not what really is. Many times he'll just start with "They did this" when we don't even know who "they" is. I ask him who? And he doesn't remember names easily. This is with SOTW. Stories, however, he'll remember a whole flow and tell it back (without names many times), but he'll know what happened. I know in the CM method it was encouraged to have the child tell back what he learned, not taught to summarize yet.

[Penelope]

The key to avoid this, I've found, is for the passage to be long enough that there is no way he could memorize the words. ;) Then he has to find a way to process it.

 

We use WWE for summary narrations and finding the main ideas. These are concise so it is challenging enough to get only 3 sentences from the length of the WWE3 passages. However, for other narrations I do not require him to summarize. Instead I have him do a telling back such as Charlotte Mason would encourage, and the passages we do this with are several pages (or more) long. This is with a 3rd grader. Here my goal is not to teach him to summarize, but to process the material so that he can remember it. I think it also helps with language, vocabulary, and writing, to form thoughts into words in an articulate way, even if it is not as short a summary.

[sagira]

The key to avoid this, I've found, is for the passage to be long enough that there is no way he could memorize the words. ;) Then he has to find a way to process it.

 

We use WWE for summary narrations and finding the main ideas. These are concise so it is challenging enough to get only 3 sentences from the length of the WWE3 passages. However, for other narrations I do not require him to summarize. Instead I have him do a telling back such as Charlotte Mason would encourage, and the passages we do this with are several pages (or more) long. This is with a 3rd grader. Here my goal is not to teach him to summarize, but to process the material so that he can remember it. I think it also helps with language, vocabulary, and writing, to form thoughts into words in an articulate way, even if it is not as short a summary.

 

This. Ds processes the information and tells it back in his own words, which I believe is great indeed for language, vocabulary, and writing.