You’ve just read aloud a very satisfactory passage, enjoying yourself immensely in the friendly banter of the characters, and pause, mulling over the beauty of the scene in your mind. There were even a few thought-provoking lines you’re excited to jot down in your commonplace book later.

“Wasn’t that nice,” you murmur to yourself. “I wish I can write like that.” And then you turn to your child and say, “So, what did you hear?”

Blank stare.

Doesn’t that just make you want to tear your hair out?

What do you do when, no matter how animatedly you’ve read aloud the passage, your child is not able to tell you a single thing he remembers from the story?

I’m waving my hand over here because I’ve had times like those with my kids, too!

Principles of Narration

By way of a quick review, let’s look at some basic principles of narration:

• Oral narration is a skill that takes time to build. So our first advice is, give it time! (If you don’t believe me, try reading a chapter in Robinson Crusoe yourself, only once, no repetition, and narrate back what you read.) Some kids start off narrating only one item or one sentence, although others can take off quite easily. Remember, every child is born a person; we are teaching the child, not the curriculum.
• A single reading is required. Charlotte Mason herself emphasizes the importance of doing only a single reading, because repetition tells our child that he doesn’t need to pay attention because mom will re-read it anyway–or worse yet, mom will explain it to me later, anyway!
• Every child is born a person. With this principle, we don’t dictate what the child needs to narrate; instead we let him decide which parts he would like to talk about.
• Education is the science of relations. We also believe that the child is able to form his own connections in the stories that we read, so we let him make them on his own.

And while we understand that many factors may come into play, in this post, we want to talk about narration prompts and how they might help some kids who struggle with narration.

Narration Prompts Can Get the Ball Rolling

Narration prompts are simply that: prompts. They are not direct questions that require a correct answer. For example, after you read a page or two, asking “What did Jessica find in the back room?” is a direct question, and not only puts your child on the spot, it also sets you up for frustration, because, what if, of all the details that were read, what your child did NOT get was that particular item?

Instead, we recommend using narration prompts. These can be:

Narration Prompt #1: An open-ended question

We can ask open-ended questions like, “What happened when Jessica went into the back room?” Or it can be as simple as “What happened?” However, some children struggle with the too-general question of “what happened.”

Let me explain.

Do you know that sometimes the blank stare may not be because he didn’t hear anything, but that the question covers too broad an area for your child to pinpoint what he wants to say?

My second son, for example, will normally only tell me the very last thing that happened before I stopped reading. This can cause frustration, because it would appear that he didn’t listen before that! But check out prompt #2 and you will see that wasn’t the case.

So my advice is, if “What happened?” doesn’t cut it, try to give a bit of “setting,” so to speak. For example:

• What happened when the winter came?
• What happened when Father came home?
• When Mary heard the sound, what happened next?

Resist the temptation to ask closed-ended questions! Remember, narration is intended to show us what the child remembers, not what he doesn’t!

Narration Prompt #2: A starting line

Remember my son who only tells me the last things that took place right before I stopped? For months I would get annoyed and ask him, “What about before that?” and usually he would be able to tell me. But rarely does he arrange things in order by himself.

I recently found that prompting him with a starting line works better for him than asking him questions. When it’s time to narrate, instead of letting him start off telling me (the last scene!), I start off by saying, “Myles was not sure about what to do next.” Then I would pause and he would take off continuing the story line.

Sometimes he would stop without remembering a whole scene, and again I would toss out, “And then the little boy showed up.”

I’ve found that throwing a one-line statement prompt is less pressure for him, too, because it’s up to him to continue the telling, but no one is waiting on him to say anything specific.

Another plus is that it also lets you “model” narration, even just in little snippets. I try to toss out as general a sentence as possible, but if not, sometimes even a dialogue line works, like “Mary said, ‘I don’t want to.'”

Narration Prompt #3. A drawn or comic narration

I admit, I’m a junkie for comic or drawn narrations. Sometimes children who struggle with oral narration (especially those just starting off with CM) are better able to express their thoughts when faced with a series of boxes, say 4 of these, and asked to note down 4 consecutive events in the story. (This has helped my second son learn to put things in order, too.)

Others do well with just being asked to draw a scene in the story, on one whole page instead of with comic-style boxes. And then, you can have them tell you either what they plan to draw, or what they’ve drawn, and already they’ll be giving you an oral narration minus the “pressure” of talking for long periods of time.

Narration Prompt #4. The Friendly Letter

If your child is already doing written narration, you can spice things up a bit once in a while, and instead of just having him write his narration in a notebook, consider having him write a letter to a friend, detailing what he learned.

Giving Time for Narration Skills to Build

But what if you’ve tried all these prompts and it still doesn’t seem to click? Again, we go back to: give it time! Sometimes we’re too much in a hurry to evaluate our children’s progress. Do you know that some kids take a year or more to get comfortable with oral narration?

The important thing is that you keep learning about the why behind the what. If you truly believe that narration is an important skill to learn, stick with it, trust the process, and celebrate every little step of progress!