Reading Comprehension With Winnie the Pooh

Reading comprehension could be taught with a tedious workbook and a list of questions to ask or multiple choice options, but my preference is to teach it with the use of narration. Narration is the art of telling back what you have heard. As Charlotte Mason stated, 

“As knowledge is not assimilated until it is reproduced, children should ‘tell back’ after a single reading or hearing . . . A single reading is insisted on, because children have naturally great power of attention; but this force is dissipated by the re-reading of passages” (Vol. 6, preface).

In this excellent post from Simply Charlotte Mason, the simplicity and fun of narration is explained, I for one am a big fan of keeping things simple and fun, while maximizing quality literature. 

Having slogged through a boring grammar workbook for most of the year, I decided that my younger children needed a break, so we started a narration series with Winnie the Pooh. 

I read a chapter and then I have the children tell me what I read about. The more details the better, and narration improves with practice. This quickly lets me know how much they understood and absorbed from the story.

After the oral retelling, they spend some time writing sentences or paragraphs about what we read and drawing a picture to illustrate. I rarely get complaints from such a fun assignment, and it is nice to get a break from all the workbooks.

Even my youngest son got excited about the story, gathering his Winnie the Pooh and Eeyore to act it out. Rather unfortunately,  in his quest for a realistic retelling of Eeyore's lost tale, he cut the tail off the poor, sad donkey. However, a few stitches can hopefully fix this and I do love seeing him enjoying and reliving a good story.