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end of term narration questions
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Does anyone have an example of an end-of-term narration they could share? I am unsure what to expect from one of these. We are using narration in lieu of quizzes for my 4th grader’s science and history, using the same time schedule as the scheduled quizzes instead of waiting til the end of the term. We did the first one for science on Thursday, which covered 5 science lessons (2 weeks of science). The lessons covered characteristics of living things, differences between plants and animals, kingdoms, classifications, and cells. This was her narration that I wrote down for her:
“In order for things to be alive, they have to have cells, they have to eat and drink, and they grow. All animals and people move, they walk or crawl or hop or slither. Plants can’t walk but plants grow. They get taller and grow leaves and stems and flowers and roots.
There is an animal kingdom, plant kingdom, kingdom for bacteria, and a fungi kingdom, and a single-cell kingdom.
Plant and animal cells have a cell wall and a liquid in there that allows things to move around. There’s the heart of the cell and little bean-like things that eat food. And there is a little thing in there that allows it to make new cells.”So she missed 2 of the 6 characteristics of living things and wasn’t entirely correct about one of them, didn’t remember the correct names for the bacteria and single-cell kingdoms, and left out parts of cells as well as not knowing the names for the cell parts and calling what the book called the “cell brain” its heart. Would this be acceptable? She does a better/more thorough and accurate narration after she reads each lesson, but I don’t know how much she should be expected to retain over time.
You can find example end-of-term narration questions and answers in Charlotte Mason’s book School Education (Vol. 3). Here is one example of a science question and narration for a ten-year-old student of hers.
Q. How many kinds of bees are there in a hive? What work does each do? Tell how they build the comb. (Book studied, Fairyland of Science.)
F. (aged 10), answer dictated:—
“Three kinds. The drones or males, the workers or females, and the queen bee. The drone is fat, the queen is long and thin, the workers are small and slim. The queen bee lays the eggs, the worker bee brings the honey in and makes the cell, and the drones wait to be fed. On a summer’s day you see something hanging on a tree like a plum pudding, this is a swarm of bees. You will soon see someone come up with a hive, turn it upside down, shake the bough gently, and they will fall in. They will put some clean calico quickly over the bottom of the hive, and turn it back over on a bench. The bees first close up every little hole in the hive with wax, then they hang on to the roof, clinging on to one another by their legs. Then one comes away and scrapes some wax from under its body, and bites it in its mouth until it is pulled out like ribbon, this she plasters on the roof of the hive, then she flies out to get honey, and comes home to digest it, hanging from the roof, and in 24 hours this digested honey turns to wax, then she goes through the same process again. Next, the nursing bees come and poke their heads into this wax, bite the wax away (20 bees do this before one hole is ready to make a cell). Other bees are working on the other side at the same time. Each cell is made six-sided, so as to take up the least wax and the smallest space. When the cells are made the bees come in with honey in their honey-bag or first stomach; they can easily pass the honey back through their mouths into the cells. It takes many bees to fill one cell, so they are hard at work.”
If you are dissatisfied with the narration, be sure to take a look at the book and make sure it is a living book. Also take a look at your narration question to make sure it is open-ended, not just asking for one-word answers or a list of facts.
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