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Narration how to
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For most of the year I have been having my kids daily narrate back to me passages that I have read to them. They tend to ramble when they narrate and parrot back a lot of what I read.
Recently, a friend mentioned to me that the point of narrating is to be able to pickout the MOST IMPORTANT parts of a story or article and/or to summarize everything – not to just repeat back what was heard word for word. Sometimes she even discusses the passage with her kids before having them narrate. She said that this is so important especially if they are going to go to college.
This really made a lot of sense to me, and we have changed the way we narrate. I have started asking them, “Ok, what were the most important parts of this story or article?”. They seem to be getting it.
Just wondering what others require in thier narrations?
Does your friend try to use CM’s methods? I ask because classical hsers also use narration some but that doesn’t mean it’s the same thing. I don’t think what your friend is describing is CM. The whole point of narration for CM is for the student to make connections. What is important for them may not be what you expect. I know traditional schooling values being able to pick out the main point and it probably worth going over at some point, esp in prep for standardized tests, but what you are describing defeats the purpose of narration as CM uses it.
Nebby
Agreeing with Nebby.
My young ones repeat a lot, but as they get better at it, they add in their thoughts and connections they make. It’s a tougher skill, I find, and a more valuable, long-lasting one.
Totally agreeing with the others. Making connections is what helps them learn and remember. In my opinion, learning to pick out what Mom thinks is the most important part is very similar to teaching to the test – once it’s regurgitated to Mom, the motivation to remember anything is gone.
We don’t summarize and I don’t ask for the most important part, unless I’m asking what the most important/interesting/strangest part was to them. I will admit that there are times when my arrogance gets in the way and I’m hoping they find important the same thing I found important, that’s a no, no. But, strangely enough, if I wait long enough, they will share what was interesting to them and discuss it in great detail. That is sooo cool!!
Usually it is not at all what I expected, it’s better! But, that takes patience on my part, and a willingness to let their minds work for those nuggets, and then be okay with whatever conclusion they came to. Now I do expect narrations (in a variety of ways) and they are all aware of that, we have them scheduled in OR I may just randomly ask about something they are reading about, etc. And at times I may skim over a passage and ask about a certain character/event, but I ask for what they remember (like I’m really curious as to what they think, cause I am), but not to catch them slipping, LOL. And, if I am reading, I do not read the passage more than once or let them refer to their books to refresh their memory.
I do have an expectation of myself and that is patience. I have a talk w/ myself beforehand to remind myself to not interrupt, ant that we may not to come to the exact same conclusions but just have a genuine discussion. I also say to myself as they are narrating (as I’m listening), “Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it.” It reminds me to slow down and wait for the wheels to turn and their minds to work on what they are going to narrate or are narrating. That’s all on me, not them. My oldest ds may come to the end of narration and remember something he thought was important but didn’t quite fit into what he had already shared. I try to give him time at the end knowing that he will probably say, “Oh, one more thing…” Then we discuss.
Hopefully I’m doing this right, as it seems to be working and my kids do not seem bogged down with the whole thing, but genuinely wanting to share what they feel they know. My goal is for them to realize that their ideas, thoughts, conclusions are important and worthy to be shared, not critiqued…been there, done that. Not a good feeling to have your thoughts said to have not been good enough or that the “answer” was not right.
My .02…sorry to ramble.
I was thinking about this as I was cleaning the house and thought by summarizing only the important parts, we take what is unique to Charlotte Mason’s methods of narration away.
Why bother with living books with lots of rich details when I can read a textbook or something else to get someone else’s ideas of the important?
Wow! Thanks for the great discussion! Thanks for all the input, everyone.
Nebby, my friend does use some CM methods, and I heard about CM from her
initially.
What do you mean by making connections?
I am not disagreeing with your comments but just trying to think this out….
Are you talking about the science of relations that CM teaches?
I thought also that I had read somewhere on SCM that narration was not supposed to be a repeating back word for word but putting the passage into your own words. I just have had a difficult time getting my kids to do that.
What is the main purpose of narration, exactly?
I’ll hop in here with just a quick comment:
While narration is not supposed to be a repeating back word for word as the final goal, in the beginning that is a very good place for a young child to start! I have seen the progression of my children’s narration abilities as they do it for longer and as they age and mature. My 11.5 year old’s narration of a passage, chapter, or reading is very different than it would have been were she 6, 8, or 9.
In the earlier ages she would have given a ‘just the facts’ narration. Then she slowly began adding in her opinions on something from the reading, such as the idea that making a mummy would be a gross job because of some of the things you have to do, like getting the brain out.
And now she is beginning to compare things across readings. So she may pull out the difference between Abraham’s obedience from a previous reading to the obedience of Jonah (not obedient the first time God commanded him). And then she may make comparisons between a reading and people she knows in real life, like her own obedience or that of a younger sibling.
I imagine as she continues to grow her narrations will develop and mature differently.
I agree that repeating word for word is not bad. Hopefully over time one sees more of teir own thought coming through to but I woudl be happy if my kids repeated more word for word.
To answer your questions about connections, when CM says education is the science of relations I think she is primarily talkign about the number and quality of relationships that the student forms with different materials. That is why she says the goal of education is to care about a lot of things or to have a lot of different realtionships with different things/people.
When I speak of making connections I am partly talkign abpout this, just getting ideas from and becomign connected to the material in front of one. But it is also a joy when one’s child is reading history (for example) and says “Oh, that is like what we were reading in science!” or literature or art. You know they are really getting it when they can bring in other things too.
What is the main purpose of narration? I feel like that is a big question. Maybe others can help out. My answer would be that it is a way for the student to process the material for themselves, to draw out what they found important or interesting and to organize their thoughts and coherently convey them. It cements their memories but it also creates the relationships wiht the material and hones a lot of brain skills like oragnizing one’s thoughts and putting a sentence together.
Nebby
This is so interesting …
I might add that this aspect of CM really requires letting go of any “schoolish/traditional/societial” ways you might be harboring without knowing it. My understanding of CM’s method for narration is that they are given this feast of information read in a living book/material and then they take it in and process it as individuals. What they give back to you when asked to “tell me everything you remember from this passage” is going to be influenced by their experience with the material and their individuality and their experiences in their education and lives to that point. It will not be (may not be) what has been accepted as “correct to remember” about said material or passage. That’s a leap of faith in CM that we have to take. I often stop myself and ask – Who said that was all that was important about ____ anyway? The hooks they are creating with this material are strong and will be added to over and over through their years of education. But, and most importantly maybe for this discussion, these hooks may not be those accepted, tried and true answers given by children in other methods of education. The CM method requires us to see the value in their processing the information that comes to them in this manner. All information. Because doing so creates a well educated, higher thinking individual who is able to learn.
I have never said or marked their narrations with anything that showed I did not think they “got” the material because what they “got” what exactly what they should have gotten. That is a leap of faith for me. And sometimes requires me to put my pencil down. I am a public school kid and a college graduate who had to “get” exactly what the teacher wanted regardless! And as a result very little of my edcuation is “my own” and what I have taught myself outside of those years has been far, far more valuable and useful to me really. Now, granted if my children did not write anything or if they simply stared at me … then I would see that something is wrong with their habit of attention or with the material presented. Luckily I haven’t had that happen so far.
My kids are both NUTS for Hisotry btw. Love it. That’s all we’d do around here if it were up to them.
So do you all think that narration is a different skill/exercise than learning to summarize or to be able to outline a passage?
I think that when my friend talks about pulling out the most important ideas from an article or reading passage, she is talking about the main ideas of the story that the author was trying to communicate.
We are doing outlining passages in Intermediate Language Lessons, and this seems to be a very important skill as well but looks like, from what everyone is saying, that it is different from narration?
I attended government schools and went to college so maybe I am still not seeing something. 🙂
Would love more feedback.
Yes, I do. I don’t think the two skills you mentioned are outside of the realm of things being taught through doing narrations, but I do think teaching those skills lacks what is accomplished through the use of narrations.
To outline a passage or summarize seem like test taking skills again. Skills my children might need in college years and might not. But certainly not ones I’m going to spend time teaching them now. I use CM to avoid that kind of rote, dry work. If you are finding the main ideas to a passage, aren’t you essentially filing in a worksheet on plot, character, etc?
This is a little off the toic here but not unrelated …. The longer I homeschool the more I am intrigued at how many of the accepted schoolish things homeschooling families are unable or unwilling to let go of in their homeschools. Perhaps many are not seeking new philosophies at all and that is why it appears that way? I don’t know. There is just a million dollar industry of curriculum now catering to homeschooling in the same way it caters to mainstream schools. How could that be if we are striking our own path following a CM education philosophy based on rich, living literature? I can’t quite wrap my mind around it yet. “Balance” must be the answer in there somewhere!
@ Alicia – yes, I think that they are two separate things. One is the child’s ideas and relations about what he heard – the other is much more about organizing material into a specific format. Once your child is proficient at narrations, learning to summarize is a skill that can easily be taught in high school years to prepare for college.
@Claire – I am trying to teach a many year veteran of HS how to use CM. She is initiating all of this herself, but has repeatedly told me that she is either overwhelmed or burned out trying to figure out how to plan. I spent 4 1/2 hours with her today – and she has textbooks, textbooks, and more textbook resource books to use. She can’t feel any enthusiam because she hasn’t been able to wrap her head around living books – much less remove all the old standbys.
There is another mom I know trying to use CM, just had a 6th baby, struggling emotionally. (Post-partem depression most likely). Another friend volunteered to hs her kids until she could return to it. The volunteer is a little freaked out about how behind the kids are. The volunteer mom talks about how they are aiming their kiddos for graduate school, so read all the time. I thought she used the Thomas Jefferson method, only to find out that she is using Abeka, which I have used and is very traditional school based. I felt bad for the boys because in the earlier years they do seem a little more behind due to the difference in methods!
I think we have such a competition based society that it is hard for people to really feel confident in their abilities to try something different (especially with the teachers union convincing people that only REAL teachers know how to teach children). How many times do we feel inadequate and on the defensive for even homeschooling because “we’re going to ruin our children”. Standing out in our society is not accepted as a good thing, so that means a million dollar industry for mainstream curriculums written for the homeschooler; thus making the homeshooling family more acceptable. Common Core Standards have a lot to answer for! 😉
I don’t want to give a false impression about what kind of schooling we do….we definitley do not use nor ever have used textbooks.
We don’t use workbooks in gerneral. Our curriculum has been, from the start (oldest is 11 now),mostly living books and MUS.
Two years ago we “switched over” to CM methods although what we were doing was pretty close to CM already. So glad that we found SCM! We’ve been doing narration for the past two years, but I just started thinking about it the past few days after the comment from my friend.
Please do not think that I am not in favor of CM methods – I love love Charlotte Mason’s methods. I guess that I need to put her books on my personal reading list for this year to gain a better understanding about the whys of her educational techniques. I am already reading the book by Karen Andreola.
All that said, it is possible that old stlyes of learning may creep back in from time to time!
BE ENCOURAGED, CM teaching methods are spreading in the HS community where I live.
I have plans to start a CM group in the fall.
Really, for those of us with larger numbers of children, CM is the most effecient way to educate.
Just found this fromt Parents’ Review:
The value of narration does not lie wholly in the swift acquisition of knowledge and its sure retention. Properly dealt with, it produces a mental transfiguration. It provides much more exercise for the mind than is possible under other circumstances and there is a corresponding degree of alertness and acquisitiveness. As a Yorkshireman would put it, the children become very “quick in t’ up-tak” (quick in the up-take). Psychologically, narration crystallises a number of impressions. It also tends to complete a chain of experiences.
Very interesting!
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