Correcting narration?

I’m no expert, hopefully Sonya or someone more experienced will chime in!  But I was just reading through some of CM’s Volume 6, and this caught my eye.  The preceding paragraph was talking about 7-9 yr. olds, I’m assuming this would be related to the 9 and older group, when written narrations were encourage to begin:

“Children shouldn’t be hassled or pressured about using proper punctuation and capital letters when they write their narrations. Those things will take care of themselves if the child reads a lot, and too many coaxings to use correct punctuation usually results in the over-use of commas.”

I’d love to hear from the experts:)  Gina

I’m no expert either, but here is an idea.  If your kids are old enough to be learning grammar ( I think the recommendation is 5th grade) then you could let them write their narrations on day 1.  Then, on day 2 give the written narration back to the child and have him look back over it and find his own mistakes.  Say something like, “You are missing two commas”, or “You forgot to capitalize an important proper noun, can you find it?”  Then you are using their own writing as a grammar lesson.  

If the words that he is misspelling are common words that he should know how to spell, then you might use these words in his next spelling lesson.  

I think it really depends on the age of the child.  I think for high school kids who are writing narrations, their grammar mistakes should be pointed out rather than ignored. Even though grammar is delayed in the early years, there comes a point where proper grammar  is important and your child should strive to use it in all writings, even narrations.

I’m not sure if others will agree with me on this, this is just what I personally think.

HTH,

Michelle