Elective Narrations how to with primary levels?

Ditto to what Suzukimom said – required narrations should not begin before the age of 6. So, I wouldn’t worry about doing anything with your JK age children, and focus on working on the skill of narration with your first and second graders for now. (That said, if your younger ones WANT to chime in with something, by all means let them. But don’t force the issue if they don’t.) Also, narration begins orally. It is fine to have them draw a picture and tell you about that if you’d like, but I wouldn’t ask them to write anything down by themselves at this stage – that can come later once they have grasped the concept of narration and find the phsyical task of writing easier. I occasionally write down what my dd (6 – first grade) narrates to me and have her copy it as copywork as an introduction to the idea of putting her own thoughts down onto paper.

Start with shorter passages – a couple paragraphs at a time. Aesop’s Fables are good for this. Longer readings can be broken down into smaller sections if you need to in the beginning. Sometimes I ask my dd6 just to tell me what happened in the story. Other times I may ask her to tell me what was the most interesting part/her favorite part of the story. Other times I have her draw something that happened in the story and tell about it. For geography type passages, I might ask her if she would want to visit the place we read about and why (or why not!).

Narration SEEMS simple but in reality it is hard work, so don’t get too frustrated if they don’t remember all the little details or all of the things you think are important in a certain passage. I occasionally find that I need to prompt my dd (still a beginning narrator) some, but I try to use open ended questions for that: Really, and then what happened next? Why did he do that?, etc. Sometimes that little nudge gets her going again if she has stalled. Sometimes it doesn’t, and in that case I let it go. If it is something really important that she needs to know, we’ll revisit the topic using other materials some other time. The idea is to find out what they DO know, not what they DON’T know. It is also to teach them to think and draw out meaning from the text for themselves rather than badgering them with yes and no questions or fill in the blanks worksheets.

If you are new to narration, I would strongly reccommend reading up on it because it is so different from the way that we who were educated in the PS system have been taught and can be difficult to wrap your mind around at first. A couple of good places to start are to search the archives of this forum and read all the threads related to narration (http://simplycharlottemason.com/scmforum/forum/narration) much, much wisdom to be gleaned from experienced homeschooling mamas here, as well as the narration FAQ’s on the Ambleside Online Website http://www.amblesideonline.org/Narration.shtml.

HTH some,

Jen