Narration Vs. Summary

[marypoppins]

Can someone please elaborate a little on the difference between a "narration" and a "summary"? I keep seeing in the guides warnings against "summarizing" rather than "narration." I guess I must be confused about what the difference is. Thanks a bunch. We will be using WG and CTC this fall.

[MelInKansas]

I think narration is supposed to be more interesting, thought through, and conversational than a summary. I think the guidelines in the back of the Preparing guide for example show some of the qualities a good narration is supposed to have. I think narration should show the child has analysed the content of the reading, not just regurgitated it. I always use the checklist in the guide as my checklist to help her improve.

[pjdobro]

I agree with what Mel said that it is telling more of the details and thoughts that the dc had not just a summary of what happened. Here is a link to a past thread where Carrie discusses more in detail the differences and a few examples are given: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8118

[marypoppins]

Patty,

Thank you so much for that link! It is exactly the info. I was looking for.

[marypoppins]

So should we be typing out the oral narrations? (Sorry, it's been about 5 years since we've used HOD, and I don't remember doing that back then. )

[LynnH]

I don't know what the instructions are in the guides before Preparing,but in Preparing through Rev to Rev you don't type their oral narrations. In MTMM and the WG guide there are days when the parent is to type the oral narrations, it isn't every oral narration. The suggestion is that they can record it into an ipod or something like that if they want and then the parent can type it.

[pjdobro]

You're welcome. I'm glad that was helpful. I don't remember when it was, but there were instructions to type up an oral narration on occasion in one guide. In looking back over them, I think it was in Preparing, but I could be mistaken. It's nice to do on occasion so that you can see how far they have come. It is also helpful to them to see how they are doing when they read it afterwards.

[MelInKansas]

Beyond and Bigger sometimes have you type up the child's narration and then have the child copy one sentence of it. This is not every time they narrate just sometimes.

Written narrations don't start until Preparing so this is a bit of a record of the child's narrations in the earlier guides. LHFHG has the narration activities with the Storytime books, pictures, sentences, things like that.