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Oral Narration with more than 1 child
- This topic has 6 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 15 years, 2 months ago by
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I have 4 children, grades 1,2,4,&5. I have been working on narration for a while, and they still don’t seem to have it down. I was pushing the older two to write their narrations, but since finding CM I have decided to sick with oral narration.
Anyways, my question is this: How do you have four kids giving oral narration on the same subject? Do you simply let them give their narration in front of each other, or do you send the other children out of the room! I think once the first child gives their narration, the rest kinda copy. I’m at my wits end here, any suggestions or what you personally do would help me so much!!
Thanks!
Hi,
Someone can correct me but I believe Charlotte Mason actually said to start formal narration with six year olds, so you are really ahead of the game here. With that, though, is the fact that you know your own and when they are ready for it. My five year old was; my four year old is definitely not (we’re still working on the sitting part :))Their young age, though, may account for the parroting of what the first one said.
When we narrate as a group we tend to do a bunch of different things. I will sometimes start with the youngest and then go up, asking if there is anything to add. They may add something, but they may not critique the one before. Any blazen errors I will have already dealt with and what I decide goes uncorrected stays that way. Or I have different children narrate different sections. Other times, I’ll just ask the one that the reading was really intended for in the first place. Then there are times when the older will narrate and the younger will do something else, like draw a picture.
Blessings,
Cindy
Oh dear! I read your post wrong. I thought you said ages, not grades…so skip the first paragraph — sorry 🙂
LoL, CindyS, I thought the same thing at first.
When we narrate as a group I usually start with the youngest. He narrates a part of the reading, then I move to the next child to add to it. In this way they all get a chance to narrate and I have a good idea how well they listened. 🙂
I also have a preschool, 1st, 3rd and 4th grader and when we do it together I start with the younger one who usually just gives about a sentence or two of his thoughts. My biggest challange is the the middle two who always seem to be zoning out. So I might ask specific questions if they don’t come up with something and then they will add to it after there little brains start running again. My other issue is that my oldest wants to tell it all and “right” so I have to make him go last ALWAYS or there is literaly nothing left to tell.
So for me starting from the bottom up is the only way. I also don’t correct unless it’s a totally made up out of no where story otherwise I let them tell in there own ways.
Misty
Sometimes we play ‘switch’. One child will start narrating, then when I say ‘switch’, the next continues on from where the previous child was up to.
Another thing we do sometimes is have a different colored bead (or other object) for each child, and whoever has their color or object dipped out at the end of a reading is the child who narrates. The others will be asked if they have anything to add at the end.
Other times, I may select an ‘answerer’ after a reading. The others all have to ask a question about the passage to be answered by the child selected as ‘answerer’. The rule is that the questioner must know the answer before asking the question. The questioners are really doing the work here as they sort through the information or story line in their heads ready to ask their questions. You could make this more ‘narration-like’ by requiring questions beginning with ‘why’ and ‘how’.
Another thing we used to do is give a time limit of, say, 3 minutes or so after a reading in which each child quickly draws a scene from the reading. The others all then have to guess what section of the reading is depicted. (Come to think of it, I must do this again – my children enjoyed this activity).
You could also try having one child narrate slowly, while one or more other children act out what is being said. This way they can all be involved even though only one is actually narrating.
HTH
Linda
Charlotte worked in a classroom, so she would have had a lot of children doing narrations and seemed to make the most of it. Hearing a narration can be just as educational as doing the narration oneself, particularly if the other students are listening to catch the other child out! 😉 I usually ask for specific narrations, not just “tell me everything you remember”. So, I might ask a younger child to tell me all she can remember about what the Boy saw at Wang P’an’s house. An older child might be asked to “compare the difference between how the Priests viewed the western technical gadgets versus how the Chinese viewed them.” Charlotte shares dozens and dozens of sample narration questions in the back of Volume 3, if I recall.
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