The Way They Should Go

Recently I’ve really noticed KTRose’s ability to remember stories I am reading to her.  She’s always done fairly well at this with her usual kiddie books, but with chapter books it has been harder.

When I pulled out The Well Trained Mind recently I was reminded of the work it recommends for retention.  Starting out with prompting questions to get your child to tell you something from the story s/he just heard.  Then working toward being able to just say “tell me about the story we read” and get an accurate plot line back. 

When I started doing this I was both amused and frustrated by the responses I got back.  Inevitably someone (from the story or not, it didn’t matter) turned into a bug, or grew wings, flew, had an adventure… all basically having nothing to do with the actual story we read.  When I tried to prompt with major plot elements I got “I don’t know”.  I realized that she liked the sound of my voice, but often tuned out from me and tuned into the running narrative that seems to be in her head.

However, after practicing this - and it really seems to need practice - she is doing much better.  I had to explain what we were doing and that I expected her to remember something from the story.  At first I was going for anything from the story.  Then we worked on having her close her eyes and listen to what Mommy said and make a sleep-story in her head of what I’m reading to help her remember.  THIS seemed to be the jackpot. 

Just this week I started getting paragraphs of accurate narrative back from her.  Whoo-hoo! 

I take whatever she has told me from the story and print it carefully on a sheet of her manuscript paper.  We read it, then she copies it to practice her handwriting.  Quite simple actually - but it puts a lot of skills to work.

This week when I wrote down what she said, I would only write one main sentence.  She got upset with me telling me, “No, no Mommy, you forgot to write…” and repeating her narrative back again.  :-)  I told her that was all a bit much for her to have to recopy - wasn’t it?  So we compromised on two sentences and she re-copied them both.

I need to remember next time to take down her narrative on the back of the paper, then we can choose part of it to use for handwriting practice.  I want to encourage getting as much back from her as possible!

It’s nice to see progress.