Knowing when to move on?

Okay, transcription and dictation follow copywork.  Transcription is when your child begins to look at the whole word, then write the whole word, then look at the next word, write the next word, etc.  Then they begin doing a few words (look at a phrase, write it without looking back, then look at the next phrase).  So one way to see if they are ready for transcription is to watch their eyes when they are doing copywork.  They may start to do it naturally on their own – you would see them look at a word, look at their paper and write it, then look back at the next word, instead of looking at a letter or two, writing a letter or two, then looking at the next letter or two in the same word, writing those, etc.  If you see them doing transcription on their own then point it out to them!  “Wow, I see you’ve already figured out how to look at a word and write the whole word before you look at the next one.  It that easy for you?  You know, once I figured out how to do that I started trying to look at two words and write them before looking back at my copy? You could try that some time if you want.”

Now, if they aren’t doing it on their own you have a similar conversation about how you figured out how to do that (one whole word at a time) and challenge them to try it. They are still doing copywork – it just is called transcription when they do it a word or couple of words at a time.  When they reach the point where they consistently do a few words at a time before looking at the paper for the next few words then they’ve pretty much prepared for dictation.  That is when you move to dictation – where you say a phrase at a time and they write it.  There is more information on that (prepared dictation – which actually has them study the passage first and then you dictate it, so they prepare first) here on the SCM blog.

With your kids being older they may move to transcription quickly.  One key is if they begin doing it but are making a lot of mistakes in their copywork they are not ready to transcribe or need to learn to do it more carefully – which takes practice.

Narration is a bit different.  You begin with oral narration and then they learn to do written narration.  However you don’t quit oral narration!  You keep doing it for many things.  In the beginning of written narration you do 1 written narration a week.  The rest is still oral.  Once that becomes easy you do two written narrations per week and the rest oral.  I would do those on different days and in different subjects personally.  So I may have a child do a written narration in science on Tuesday and a written narration in history on Friday.  The rest of the week and all other subjects they keep doing oral narration.  Once two per week becomes easy we could do 3 written narration per week, working our way up to 1 per day, or even 2 in one day, etc.  It all depends on the child!  Remember, in a typical CM timeline you don’t even introduce written narration once a week until a child is around 4th grade (age 10-ish).  That child may stay on one written narration all year.  But if you’re starting with a 15 or 16 year old they may be ready to do 2 written narrations per week after just a few weeks, or a few months, instead of a whole year.  Kids are so individual.  You aren’t behind!  You are where you are.

Does all that make sense?

Correcting written narrations – that is up to you.  I don’t.  I want them to embrace the writing aspect.

Once they are getting comfortable with that we will look at their written narration together and I’ll do this:

1. Ask if they notice anything they would change or that isn’t quite right (spelling, punctuation, etc).  If they do see something we talk about that.

2. If they don’t see something I will choose one thing to show them that needed to be fixed.  Only one.  Then in the future we check for that particular thing (maybe they misspelled ‘where’), so we are holding them accountable for learning and remembering to do that one thing.  Once that mistake no longer crops up in their writing we choose one new thing to focus on (maybe this time it is using question marks or apostrophes correctly.