Narration Helps

Narration, simply put, is telling back.

How do you know if your children are really learning what you are teaching them?

What if your child could tell you back in his own words what you just read to him? Would that convince you?

Generally, we consider a child to have grasped something if he can retell the concept or events in his own words. That retelling demonstrates that the information is now his own. This is narration.

We are all naturally narrators. Think about it. When your child comes inside from playing in the yard, you ask, "What did you do?" She proceeds to explain all her activities, retelling them with great detail and emotion. That same process occurs with academic narration. You ask a leading question ("What did Napoleon do?") and listen to the child's story.

Narration Starters

• What did I read?


• Tell me the story back in your words.


• Tell me what happened in order.


• Tell me all you remember.


• Tell me what you understood.


• Tell me four/five things you learned from this page/chapter.


• What do you think about ____?


• Why did _____ ?


• How is this page/chapter/story like ____(another page/chapter/story read earlier)?


• Do you agree with ____ (an action, quote, or concept from the reading)?


• Describe ____ (person).

Unfortunately, the natural tool of narration has too often been replaced with worksheets full of multiple choice, true and false, or fill-in-the-blank questions. Rather than digesting the material of the lesson (as required for narration), the child simply chews on tiny, often unrelated, bits of it.

Since it is quite difficult to fake a narration, the child must pay attention to the lesson. If your child did not, you will immediately recognize it from their incomplete or inaccurate narration.

A weak narration can also be the result of simple misunderstanding. There may be key vocabulary words that your child is not understanding. Or maybe a key event was not grasped. It's up to you as the teacher to explore the problems and correct them. It may mean asking some probing questions to identify where the problem lies. It may necessitate rereading the passage in question.

Narration is also a foundation for good writing skills. At first, the child gives oral narrations. But later, those exact same skills of articulation, analysis, application, and comprehension are used in writing expository paragraphs and essays. Generally, you can begin transitioning into written narrations (instead of verbal narrations) around age 10 or 11.

Some people have the idea that lapbooks are simply glorified worksheets. Although that is true of some of the pre-made kits on the market, lapbooking can be a very effective form of narration.

If the child has a great amount of ownership in the creation of the minibooks, without too much direction from an adult, then they can be a good reflection of his understanding.

Just as you ask your child a starter question for a verbal narration, you can make a request for a mini-book:

• Make a mini-book that lists the events we just read about.


• Make a mini-book the explains how the Hopi Indians lived.


• What did we learn from that motion experiment? Put it into a mini-book.


• Write and illustrate the 3 most important ideas from these two pages.


• So, what should we put in a minibook about Pizarro?

After several narrations are made in different mini-books, those are gathered together into a lapbook that will be kept and looked at again and again.

Notebooking is an obvious choice for written narrations. This is so much more than simply writing a paragraph or an essay summarizing the main ideas and then storing it in a binder.

Notebooking can be very versatile and include a child's own perspective on the lesson. Besides the text written by the child, consider including drawings, photographs, postcards, recipes, newspaper clippings, lists, maps, papercrafts, and brochures. You may also consider a commonplace book, a variation of notebooking.

Anything that allows the child to demonstrate his understanding of the lesson can be considered narration. And like lapbooking, notebooking results in a lovely end product that can be reviewed time and time again.