need guidance for beginning narration

Hi, Shannon,

I’m also new to using narration so I don’t have a lot of advice.  However, here are some blog posts on the subject that you might find helpful.

http://simplycharlottemason.com/2013/01/16/5-steps-to-successful-narration/

http://simplycharlottemason.com/2010/09/22/charlotte-mason-anwers-your-questions-about-narration-language-arts-part-4/

http://simplycharlottemason.com/2008/07/17/the-charlotte-mason-method-of-narration/

Shannon, this is a perfect time to begin narration. You’ve chosen a good book to start with. How much you read will depend on your sons’ attention spans. As soon as you see their attention and focus wondering, stop the reading. Narrating what you read is as easy as saying, “Now, tell me what you know about (blank)”. That is how we first started narrating. At first, they may only tell you one thing. That’s ok. The idea is to get them used to hearing a reading and then telling it back. If they can tell one thing, it was a successful narration. The longer you do this with them, the better they’ll become and the narrations will get longer and more detailed. You can also read a passage and then have them draw a picture of the passage. Or you can have them tell you their favorite part of the story or tell about their favorite character. Charlotte Mason did not want us to interrupt the child’s narration for correction or otherwise. Let them finish the narration first. If they gave misinformation, you can gently correct them by saying something like, “That was very good. Was Caesar killed only by Brutus and Cassius or by the whole Senate?” (This was our narration for today which is why I use it as an example.)

Usually the child will have an ah-ha moment and will remember the correct version of the story. Another thing Charlotte recommendes was writing a few key names or places on a board or white board as “hooks on which to hang their narration”. This helps so much, especially when you begin to study people or places with strange-sounding names. Start slow and easy. Don’t put too much pressure on them or expect too much too soon. You may be very surprised by their narrating abilities or you may have to work with them for months to develop this skill.

Blessings,

Lindsey

(Typed from my iPhone. Sorry for any errors.)

I think that depends on several factors, Shannon. We don’t narrate everything in our homeschool. History, Bible, some science, and some literature are narrated, but not all of those daily. Also, if you’re new to narration, once a day is probably good because you don’t want to tire the children out with read/narrate/read/narrate all day. I think if you weren’t narrating in some form at least once per day you couldn’t consider your methods CM-friendly, since CM used narration as such a large part of her style. Another factor to consider is the age of your children. My dd is 7.75 years old and only does oral narrations for history, Bible, and science. Ds, however, is 9 and does written narrations on top of his oral narrations. Right now, those written narrations are for history and Bible only since this is new to him. There’s no one set way to do narration. You find what works for you and each individual child.