Two Questions

[Haiku]

1) My six year old dd is doing very well with reading. However, she doesn't like to read anything more than once. I figured out today that she is reading for information while I want her to be reading for fluency. In her mind, once she's read it and knows what it says, why bother reading it again? (Which is quite different than when I read aloud to her--then she really enjoys hearing the same thing multiple times.) I have been trying to have her read stories for several days in a row to increase her fluency, but she resists. Should I continue to do that or allow her to read "fresh"material every day?

 

2) Both my kids, when doing narrations, usually narrate to me almost verbatim what the passage I read says (at their ages, 5 and 6, I am just having them narrate a paragraph). They have good memories, but I am afraid that they are not really "narrating" but just "parroting." We have talked about narrating "in your own words," but my ever-practical six-year old has pointed out to me that "if it sounds good the way they wrote it, why change it?" Suggestions?

 

Thanks!

 

Tara

[Alana in Canada]

1) fresh material.

 

2) Are you writing down their narrations? Do so! Have them copy it out. Tell them that's what is going to happen before you start th narration. You explain that now that they know the story so thoroughly, you are now going to summarize the information. Both the process of "dictating" to you and the process of writing it out themselves motivates them to shorten things up.

[Suzannah]

Maybe you could do a mix. Do you set a certain number of books or time period for reading? Maybe you could choose a book for her to read more than once and she could choose the others. Poetry lends itself to being read more than once.

 

But I'm not sure that it matters whether she reads something more than once. It might make it more challenging for you to come up with more new books for her to read.

Blessings.

[VaKim]

I can only answer number one. I'd let her read fresh material. Fluency will come naturally with quantity. You don't want to turn her against reading.

[In The Great White North]

1. Dc were the same way. Really, I think that's why they didn't read til later - the early stuff didn't interest them and they weren't reading for the fun of it, but for the info. When they found the info they thought was worth reading, they read. I'd dedicate myself to making sure she has stuff to read that she considers worthwhile. If she reads it out loud to you, she will become more fluent, even with new material each time (after all, a certain percentage of the words do repeat anyway).

 

2. I vaguely remember a comment on the CW forums about this very thing. She said it was no big deal. Eventually, they will get to something too long to recite and then they will start summarizing in their own words.