What is your first-grader doing? (Narration examples?)

[pookel]

I'm kind of worried about where my first grader is, and I'm hoping some of you will be kind enough to share what level your kids are at. Like, what kind of math problems can they solve, how is their handwriting, what is their reading level, what do their narrations sound like? TIA.

[MelissaMinNC]

:lol::lol::lol:

 

Oh, wait, you were serious? Hmm.

 

His narrations are horrendous. He needs a LOT of work in this area. I don't even know if I can give an example. They're kind of like this:

 

Me: "What did I just read about?"

 

Him: "I don't know."

 

Me: "You can't remember one thing?"

 

Him: "..."

 

Then there is much pulling, and pushing and prompting and spoon-feeding, and finally he can give me something. This comes from him not paying attention I am sure, more than an inability to express himself because he can spontaneously narrate about something that has happened to him, something he's watched or something someone has read to him throughout the day in great detail.

 

He is just starting to learn basic addition facts. He understands the concept of adding one group of things to another group of things and getting a total. He only has a few random facts memorized. We do a lot of games and manipulatives for this. We also do calendar time, (Day, Month, Date, Year & talk about yesterday/today/tomorrow) and count the days of school to do basic place value (he understands that 3 groups of 10 makes 30 and if you have 7 more you get 37 all together).

 

He doesn't have a reading level yet. We're still doing phonics. Yesterday he read this:

 

"God Made The World

 

The world was dark. It had no life. It only had water. But God was there."

 

He did okay reading that, and he was super-pleased. But he has yet to pick up a book and try reading it, so I can't say that he is reading at xx level, kwim? (Unlike my dd who was reading at about a 3rd grade level by this time. They're all different.)

 

His handwriting is okay for a 6yo boy, I guess. He tries hard. Doesn't get most letters backwards (the occasional b/d reversal). He's a little inconsistent in the sizing. We do about 10 minutes of copywork 4x/week. I figure consistency is key here.

 

I'm sorry I laughed. I just have to laugh when I think of him narrating - or else I will cry or :banghead:

 

Does this help?

[*Jen*]

My son is all over the place depending on what we are working on.

 

I agree with Melissa about Narrations. We did 10 weeks of WWE1 and decided to put it on the shelf for awhile. Trying to get him to listen and do a narration was worse than pulling teeth. I'd read the passage and ask him if he could remember one thing to tell me. No. So I would ask him the questions. No. I'd reread the part of the passage with the answer and still only 50% of the time he could answer the question. We'd finally get through the questions and he could retell me his final answer for his narration for me to write down.

 

Outside of WWE when its something that interests him he has no problem answering questions or giving me one sentence about something. So for now we are working on doing 2 narrations a week from something that interests him.

 

For Reading we are starting to read Magic Tree House books. He still rarely picks up a book on his own, but he will sit and read a chapter of MTH to me every night. He is on lesson 185 in OPGTR.

 

Math we are finishing Singapore 2A so he is doing multiplication tables of 2 and 3.

 

Handwriting is something we are working on. He writes most of his letters correctly with some occasional reversals on b,d,p and q. He uses capital letter appropriately most of the time, but occasionally will throw in a capital B or D so he doesn't accidentally reverse them.

[Karen in CO]

Instead of narrations for my first grader, we're working on storytelling. We started with several readings of a fairy tales she loves, then she retells the story to me. It took her a while to be able to remember the events in the correct order and a while to be able to add expression to her retelling. So far, she's really good with 3 Little Pigs, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and Rapunzel.

 

I'm hoping to start WWE1 with her about the middle of the school year.

[Cindyz]

Just this week, I had a revelation! Instead of reading it to him while he stares off into space, I read it to him while following the words with a pencil or my finger. He then follows along with the words (and I know he's reading them because he will correct me if I make a mistake), and suddenly he can do wonderful narrations when before he was exactly like the original poster described.

[KellyGirl]

I have a dd in first grade. Today wasn't a good day as far as narrations go. It was a lot of "I don't remember, I don't know. What else do you what me to say?!" But I'll give you an example from a few weeks ago. Now remember, I'm doing the writing so it's probably a little more polished than what she originally said.

 

From SOTW Chapter 2 "Beowulf"

There was a man named Beowulf who brought his army to help the Anglos and the Saxons defeat the monster Grendel. Beowulf pulled Grendal's arm off and then Grendal ran away and drowned.

 

I don't worry much about handwriting at this age, especially with the boys. I do have them practice and encourage them to form letters the right way...but I'm pretty lax and don't make them do a ton of copy work.

 

My dd has a good grasp on addition, but probably only has plus 1, plus 2 and some doubles memorized. She can solve the word problems in Math Mammoth, but only if I read them to her - she's a hesitant reader (even though she probably could read some of them herself).

 

As for reading, she is reading the 1st grade ABeka readers, but still stopping to sound out lots of words. She will tell you she can't read. My oldest was probably 7 or 8 before he would even think about picking up a book and reading it on his own, but now I frequently have to say, "please put your book down and go do __________."

[myfunnybunch]

First grade is so difficult to compare between kids because developmentally they can be all over the place.

 

My current first-grader is reading at a much higher level than his now-3rd grade brother was at that age. But in math, both of his brothers were way ahead of where he is now. Narration is a struggle for my oldest (5th) and youngest (1st). My middle narrates beautifully. All of my boys have beautiful handwriting because they seem to have inherited dh's fine motor skills; my sister's same-age children struggle with handwriting. It varies so much from kid to kid, and from curriculum to curriculum too.

 

Sorry that's not very specific. :) It's just so variable that it's hard to say where a child should be at this age. I found the What Your ___-Grader Needs to Know series helpful in terms of what kinds of general knowledge kids in ps are likely to be learning. Other than that, I just meet each kid where he is--push a little, review a little.

 

Cat

Edited September 27, 2011 by myfunnybunch

[justamouse]

If you follow CM, in there somewhere in

they shouldn't be required to start before 6 years old.

 

It's hard to start, and takes a while to catch on, so some take to it like water, and some struggle. Mine have it easy because they have brothers and sisters they've watched and so they were narrating at a young age.

 

As for the rest, first graders are hard to pin down. Their skill levels are all over the place and I think you're setting yourself up for anxiety if you're looking to compare.

[melissel]

Put me in the laughing group :D I agree that they can be all over the place. At this age, DD9 was reading fluently and doing RightStart math with me. My DD6, who is a very young 6, is still sounding out the beginnings of words and guessing at the rest most of the time (:banghead:), doesn't want to go near math AT ALL (in fact, I'm not actually sure she can count to 100--she refuses to try for me), but loves First Language Lessons, has memorized a few poems, and narrates decently and cheerfully (thus far, anyway!). I consider her to be doing more K-level work at this point.

 

HTH!

[JZMom]

I have a SN 6 year old. We've been doing 1st grade work for 3 weeks.

 

Narration is tough, but I've noticed that if I read a few sentences, then ask a question, it helps a ton. Sometimes I'll pause and draw a picture of what's going on, or give him some type of hands-on explanation. For example, we were reading chapter 2 in SOTW today, and I could tell it was going right over his head. I brought him into the kitchen and flooded a little bowl inside of a baking dish, and made a spoon a house, then asked him if he would like to build a house on the banks of the Nile. He loooved that.

 

He can usually tell me at least one thing from the story, but it's not always the main idea. A lot of times he'll tell me he can't think of anything, but if I just pause for about 30 seconds, he'll come up with all sorts of stuff.

 

He's doing well with reading. Today he read a chapter from Frog and Toad Are Friends, and he did well with that.

 

Math- math is tricky for us. His delays affect his math abilities. We're doing RightStart B, (did A last year), and we're doing all of the review just for reinforcement. He has a hard time with anything that does not have a visual representation, but he is adding a bit, and seems to really get the concept. He does well with part/whole type stuff.

 

He has some minor fine motor issues, and his handwriting reflects that. He still frequently reverses a few letters and numbers. He has a hard time keeping letters a consistent size, and tends to place them all over the place. He actually enjoys doing a certain amount of writing though, so I'm hoping he'll improve a lot this year.

[ChristusG]

Last year DD was in first grade. Her handwriting was very large and very sloppy....we didn't focus on writing a lot. She was only reading basic CVC words. Math was two digit addition and subtraction, begging time, etc. Her favorite subject was science.

 

This year, for second grade and over the summer, she has made LOTS of improvements.

[Forget-Me-Not]

My first grader just finished reading The Art of War and will be preparing a book report forthwith.

 

No, seriously, we're doing WWE 1 and FLL 1. She does pretty well with narration, but I can't always get her to answer in complete sentences and if I insist she pulls an attitude. Today, we read the passage and I asked her to compose a sentence about what she remembered from the passage. . . she instead recited a sentence from the copywork from the day before and then laughed hilariously while I wrote it down because she "made mommy copy one of the sentences" :lol: (it fit, so I went with it).

 

Math. . . she's doing Math Mammoth 1B. Right now it's measurements. Before that was clocks and breaking double digit numbers into tens and ones.

 

And I 'caboose' her for Latin, science and history with my 3rd grader. She does pretty well with them. I do a lot of writing on her behalf because it's a lot for her and she gets tired, but she'll narrate (with prompting) what we did for our science experiment or whatever. Her handwriting is . . . meh. Getting better at least. We've been working a lot on not putting random capital letters in the middle of words/sentences.

[HarbourLights]

We're using WWE1 and it's working really well for us. I have twin boys and this morning we read an excerpt from "Peter Rabbit". The first narration was "Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail were good little bunnies, but Peter was a naughty bunny." and the second narration was "Peter went down to Mr. McGregor's garden and he ate some lettuce, beans, radishes, and parsley because he felt sick." We narrate for several different subjects each day and I think that the extra practice has helped quite a bit.

 

In math (we are using Horizons I) we are still reviewing quite a bit from what they finished up in Horizons K. They struggle with counting by 3's and 6's, but can count by 2's, 5's, 10's and 20's to 100 easily. The rest (shapes, colors, bigger, smaller, days, month, time to the hour and half hour, word problems, vert. and horiz. addition and subtraction etc.) come easily as it was all covered in K last year.

 

They are getting much more confident with handwriting and it's now more of a practice thing vs. learning the correct stroke pattern thing. I have a leftie and a rightie and surprisingly it's the leftie who has the better writing! We do copywork, HWOT lesson, spell test, and math work daily so they get quite a bit of practice on their penmanship.

 

Level 2 & Level 3 readers are read easily and Level 4 readers take a bit more time. One needs me to use my finger or pencil to keep his place as he reads and the other does not. One struggles more with the flow of his read alouds and the other has a very natural flow that comes easily for him. We are on lesson 198 for OPGTR and read aloud a chapter a day for 'school time' as well as reading aloud to them each night from an adapted classic (i.e. just finished Call of the Wild... they loved this one.)

 

So all this sounds great right? Well, full disclosure makes me admit that there are good days and bad days. On good days we go full steam ahead... on bad I ease up a bit. I would say for every 4 good days in the week there's 1 not so great day. It's all good... slow and steady is my motto! :001_smile:

[Garga]

Hard to answer. My current 1st grader is doing pretty well. But when my oldest was a 1st grade, he didn't do near as well.

 

Maybe it's because I know what I'm doing a little more, maybe it's b/c my oldest has ADHD and the youngest doesn't, maybe it's because there's been a lot of rain this year.....meaning, it could be anything.

 

 

My oldest still has horrible handwriting, so I'm making him do copywork along with my youngest (1st grader.) The 1st grader has lovely handwriting.

 

My oldest easily learned to count, know what was before and after, figured out how to write 21 vs 12, but my youngest (1st grader) still has trouble counting and even though we've been working on it for about a year, gets 12 and 21 or 13 and 31 mixed up.

 

My oldest would give long drawn out narratives, the youngest gives short and to the point narratives, and only on a small part of the lesson. I'm not sure which is better. Narratives are supposed to be short and to the point, after all.

 

Each child is different.

[chepyl]

My son reads very well for a 6 year old. He can read and comprehend to a 5th grade level, but his stamina is only good for 2nd grade work.

 

He hates to write. He has NO stamina for handwriting. If I promise no writing beyond our four spelling dictation sentences, I get beautiful work. He makes some letters backwards (starts on the wrong side). I hope cursive will fix that will fix that.

 

For narration, I read a small section, less than a page, and ask a question. Then I move on. When I finish, I have him tell me about it. He does much better this way. If I just read a whole story from SOTW and ask him to tell me about it, I get little.

 

We are on the last bit of SM 2a. We just started multiplication.

 

Our biggest problem is focus. He can do legos for hours, but 5 minutes of math and he is done.:confused:

[Mommy22alyns]

Sylvia is reading far above first-grade level.

 

She's on LU 102 in CLE math, but it's very easy for her because she was adding 2-digit numbers at the end of K with Horizons.

 

Now, her narrations? :001_huh: She likes to answer, "I don't know." Sigh. She's doing WWE 1, and this is her narration from Week 7, Day 4:

 

"Mr. McGregor yelled, 'Stop thief!'"

 

We have a hard time pulling answers from her on the SL readers too.

 

Her handwriting needs work, but it's decent and she's not overly pencil-phobic.

[Rivka]

Here's a random SOTW 1 narration for my first grader:

 

The temple of Athena had beautiful pictures of battles inside. It was called the Parthenon. One picture showed centaurs and people fighting. Who do you think won the battle?

 

Her narrations for WWE 1 aren't nearly as good, because she doesn't make any effort to summarize the passage - the directions say "tell me one thing you remember about the passage," and that's all she does. One random bit. She makes her WWE narrations as long as possible if it's the day I write the narration myself, and as short as possible if it's the day that she copies the narration after I write it.

[My3Monkeys]

Here's my FB post from a couple of weeks ago about ds who is a young 2nd grader:

 

Started on the Crusades today. When asked why Jerusalem was important to the Muslims, ds responded "It was important because there was a magic rock that Muhammad went on and rose up to heaven after he died on the cross."

 

 

 

Prior to that he said that the Battle of Hastings was won by "Guido." :lol: History can be interesting here.

[myfunnybunch]

She makes her WWE narrations as long as possible if it's the day I write the narration myself, and as short as possible if it's the day that she copies the narration after I write it.

 

:D

 

Mine does too.

 

Cat

[Soror]

My son is a nearly 7 yo First grader;

Reading- right at 1st grade level- he doesn't really read on his own for fun, I think more because he doesn't care to at this point even when it is words that he does know, his stamina very long with this at all. BUT we are making progress- so we keep pushing on!

 

Writing- He is a left-handed boy!- I can get him to write fairly neat but he won't write much at all. It is not at all pretty. We are really trying to work on letter uniformity- as the sizes can be all over the map.

 

Narration- He generally does really good at this and has for a while, he pays attention well. I have to watch the instructions in WWE though as when I tell him to pick one thing about the story he picks a random thing. He remembers well what we read though and can usually tell me the moral of the story or the main idea.

 

Math- On RSC- he is starting multiplication, adds 2 digit numbers mentally, adds 4+ digits w/ carrying, basic mental subtraction - I think up to 2 numbers- depending on the problem. Tells time to the minute and can give change w/ money- count it out etc. He loves Math, this summer we spent an hr a day on it, at least! This is his strong suit, so I really have pushed him here.

[....]

My first grader just finished reading The Art of War and will be preparing a book report forthwith.

 

No, that's MY 1st grader! :tongue_smilie: Just kidding. Lol.

 

Let's see...we're using WWE1, so she's only writing down copywork. She tells me her narrations (and they're fine - typical 6 yro stuff).

 

Her handwriting is actually pretty good. Which was a big surprise. I think her handwriting is actually better than my 8 yro's handwriting.

 

Math is Miquon...so she's adding and we started on addition flash cards. She loves Miquon.

 

She's able to memorize the memory work in FLL 1. All Systems Go with that one.

 

Her reading...she's on OPGTR Lesson 60-ish. She's also reading thru MFW Bible Reader and that's been great.

 

Girl Scouts started back up this week, so I got to see at what level the ps 1st graders were and my daughter seems to be right where everyone else is.