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should i insist on names in a narration?
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I have been having DD give narrations since the beginning of January. She has only been giving me the barest skeleton on the story. I wrote the names on a white board and she still refuses to use them. We are talking about a 14yr old. Should I insist on the names or just continue to be give her freedom to narrate how she wants? Or any ideas on how to gently help her give. Better narrations? I have been having her narrate after just 1 chapter. I have tried using the narration starters and she thinks they are to childish. I just worry because high school is next school year for her. And yes she is acting very 14 these days. Maybe this will pass?
I do insist on names, and that’s something I’ve had to really work with my two ds11 on this year. It is hard to remember it all, and I have told them I struggle with this as well, and that it helps me to write down the names as I encounter them. I will let them use that list of names when they give me a narration. Even though it’s difficult, I believe it’s really important to remember who or what you’re reading about! 14 can be tough with girls, I agree, but if you don’t insist, my guess is this may not pass but instead become a habit.
I asked a similar question at a local Charlotte Mason support group meeting last year, and was told by the leader that it could be one of two problems:
– the child isn’t attending and has gotten into the habit of being lazy
– or it’s the wrong kind of book.
I’ve had kids who fall into both categories at different times. With at least one ds11, it was a real skill to manage the narrations and we only did a few pages at a time to start – less if that’s too difficult. I instructed them that if they’re having trouble, they have to go back to where they started and see if they can mentally narrate each paragraph – not that I expect them to narrate each to me, but it helps them figure out where they stopped understanding or paying attention, and helps them focus more. I find myself doing this frequently as well, particularly when reading CM’s original series, which can be a challenge, and I’ve shared that with them so they know it takes work sometimes to make information your own.
With my ds 14, who is a strong student and gives wonderful narrations, I found we’d chosen the wrong text earlier this year – a much recommended but very dry book (Streams of Civilization). This kid with an amazing memory and love of history could remember hardly a thing from his reading, and I realized that we’d chosen the wrong book – not a story, not living, not engaging and dry as unbuttered toast. When we switched to Story of the Ancient World and First Ancient History, he was back in his groove and loving and remembering history.
Does she read it herself? I found my kiddos actually do better when they are reading themselves after age 10, as Charlotte suggested; they read their own history, while I read historical fiction and geography aloud. One thing that sometimes helps my kids get started is to read a few sentences from somewhere in the text to jog their memories, and give them a starting place.
Blessings,
Aimee
When you insist on names how you do go about it? We are reading Betsy and the Emperor. Yesterday, she started her narration with the chickababy and I stopped her. (I know a big no, no) and told her to use the characters name Betsy. She refused. She said she would do the narration (which would be very basic) but would not use any names. We stopped work and I told her she was grounded for the rest of the day. She still refused to do the narration and stayed on the sofa for the rest of the day.
I need to find a non confrontational way to draw the narrations out. She can be very stubborn and once she digs in her heals, most of the time there is no immediate retreat.
I think that of the two options you shared in the case of this book the habit is laziness.
She says history is boring and she would rather me read it to her. We are using Sonlight this year. I read the history spine and the reader to her. She reads the read-aloud to herself. We switched the readers and read-alouds because she says the read-alouds are more interesting and she can read them to herself and pay attention.
Last night she said that she would rather do the comprehension questions than narration. Which in the past she says she does not like the comprehension questions because she feel interrogated. Maybe we should do questions twice a week and narration twice a week?
I was planning on using module 5 for her next year and now I am wondering if we can do that if we can’t get her act together on the narrations.
We found when using Sonlight that the amount they have you read every day is far beyond what CM would recommend. Can you shorten the length of each day’s readings, with the understanding that you won’t get to all the books, or that you’ll use some as read-alouds during the summer? I think scaling way back might really help; look at the scheduling in the SCM modules and see how that compares to the amount of reading you’re doing now, to get an idea of what I’m suggesting.
We did this during the last year we used Sonlight, and everyone actually learned so much more! What core are you using? Might it be difficult to narrate from? Could you choose just a portion to have her narrate, ie,tell me something about the battle of xyz?
Perhaps one way to get around this would be to require at least one written narration per week; my thinking is that if she is writing it, that would remove the temptation to make it an argument with mom (which it sounds like she is doing, and she will have some alone time to do it. Other days of the week, she could do oral narration, and if she refuses, you could require her to write it instead. My thought is that she would likely prefer to do it orally!
I don’t know how CM this is, but I do know that when I first required this of my dd years ago (she was about 11 at the time), she first did things like write in yellow crayon, or make changes by taping pieces of paper onto the original. I had to insist that she redo these, because I didn’t want her to get into the habit of terribly sloppy, lazy work when I knew she was capable of more (she’d been public schooled until that time and I knew what she did there) but was choosing to be strong-willed and difficult with me. My daughter also would have preferred comprehension questions – truly, they are easier to answer and don’t require careful reading. Narration is a skill that requires practice and really requires them to think and attend, which is easier for some of us than others!
She wants to do Module 5 next year because she likes world history better than American, The idea alternating American and world in a week appeals to her. I explained to her that if she wanted to do that program is based on narration and we could not do better at narration we could not do that program next year. She said that she does not want to remember the names of fictitious characters only the historical ones, because she knows that they are important. We decided as a transition we would do narration 2 days a week and comprehension questions 2 days. I also advised that I would write the names on the board so she could just look at them a plug them in to her narration. She agreed.
I asked her yesterday if she would rather write her narration and she said no. I do have her make an outline from our readings in Story of the World. That has been going well. I am trying to get her to move to more of a paragraph form for that.
I do know what you mean about how much Sonlight schedules to read in a day. It is a lot. Last month I did slow it down to one chapt per day per book. It did seem to make the day less stressful, but it really bugged me to be crawling through the core. We are using core H, world history part 2. I thought; I would try reading all that Sonlight assigns but just stop after the first chapter and have her do narration then finish the other without a narration required. Maybe I should go back to slowing down the core.
I come from a SL background – which my kiddos loved, but their narrations were very similar to the one you are describing. There was just.so.much. to remember. Even breaking it down didn’t always help because they *knew* there would be so much more to do even after the 3 or 4th mini-narration. Taking much smaller chunks of reading at a time was the way to go for our family. They really do retain so much more than trying to cram it all in and hope for the best. It was SO amazing that my dd who was a junior at the time, and the main reason I turned to the CM methods wholeheartedly, learned more in that half year than she had done the previous years before that. She went from horrible retention to really making connections and remembering all of the details. It was a night and day difference.
However, because I tend to be a box-checker and because our family had made so many great memories with most of the books in each Core, I found it was too painful to pare down the books – I’d much rather add some in than choose which to set aside. So, for me it became important to find a curriculum that was heavy on the great, living books, but I could follow a guide since I was afraid that I’d end up with too many gaps in their education if I did it myself. If you find that you fall into that camp, PLEASE do not be afraid to set SL aside and try something else.
Here is another thought for you… history comes in different “types”, for lack of a better designation. Is she a fashionista? Then incorporating historical clothing reading into her books might help. If she really enjoys learning about monarchs, etc, then choose her history accordingly. Sometimes showing reluctant history students that there is a history to most everything – cars, clothing, hair style, politics, etc. helps them to begin to make connections that then carry over into the traditional historical information. It may be that she will never be a history buff, but it is important for her that she has a basic grasp of true, unadulterated history (the good, the bad, and the ugly), and she can find an area that she can use as a hook to hang the “boring” history. I hope that makes sense.
Please forgive the disjointed ponderings here. I have been working on this post for well over 3 hours – typing bits and pieces between helping with school items. If I don’t make sense somewhere, please ask for clarification.
Thank you so much for your time. I was feeling so discouraged. You all have been so helpful. I am a box checker. I have trouble dropping any books from SL. I do not add much, but I don’t drop anything either. I also have a hard time putting a book down once I start reading it. I do see now that we need to slow SL down and be okay not finishing our core this year. Some days I am okay with that idea and some days it really bugs me. I just need to let it go.
Dd likes science, but if we did the history of science she would not enjoy it. She is not very into biographies. Her favorite type of books to read is fantasy, adventure, and sci-fi.
We had a good time studying cultures when we did core F and she seemed to like doing Core G when the topics were ancients. She likes ancient Egypt and Mythology. But we can’t just park in one era of history and stay there. She says that she is college bound and she wants to major in Science. So, she will need American, World and Government for high school graduation.
I know, it’s so hard to slow things down when there’s a feeling you won’t get to it all, or a feeling of being wasteful with materials you’ve bought. Yet covering the time period in a way she’ll remember will be so much more important than reading all the books. You can always schedule in some of the books as readers next year. Our last year of SL, I ended up scrapping the spine and using SOTW 4 (which I already owned) as a spine, but reading/assigning only the chapters pertaining to American history or world events and characters I felt they really needed to know about – Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, Hitler’s rise and fall, etc – to make sense of world history and the wars in that century. I used the IG as a guide to what topics to cover, skipping some and choosing those we didn’t want to miss by year’s end. Don’t know if that would help? Sounds like you’re figuring out what works best for both of you – great job. 🙂
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