studying issues :0(

Are you asking them for narrations during your read-aloud time? If you are (whether written or oral), that should tell you whether they absorbed enough of the material you read, and there really shouldn’t be a need to study it again. Of course, if your children have to take standardized tests to satisfy your state regulations, I suppose you might want them to review things…..but you would be surprised what they remember without rereading books.

If you are asking for written narrations and you’re not satisfied with the results, you can either ask them to narrate a smaller portion and write it following the read-aloud time instead of waiting until the end of the day.

I never reviewed or studied on my own until college, with the sole exception of AP chemistry.  What you NEED to worry about is what they are understanding–they may not be needing a lot of what schools call “review” or “studying”.  At least not at their ages.  They SHOULD be retaining most of what they hear/read the first time through, if not, it’s time to work on attention and narration.

My kids do not study the materials after they or we read them. I believe Charlotte Mason’s idea was that the children would be attentive and remember information after one focused reading. I don’t believe she was big on memorizing dates and other information, as in classical education, but rather on children making connections with the material as time goes on, and I think it was rather against her principles to have children reread material (do feel free to correct me if anyone knows otherwise).

Oral narration after each reading will let you know if the children are absorbing information – you can ask yourself, do they seem to have a grasp of the material? (Not every detail, mind you.) The connections they’ll make may be different than yours, but if they’re attentive and it’s the right, living book and not too long a reading, they should be able to recall a good amount from what you or they have read. At about age 10, we begin to require written narrations, and this is another way to recall and to make information stick.

In terms of reviewing, we start each day’s reading with me asking who can share what happened last time, or who can remember where we let off; this way their memories are jogged.

You shouldn’t have to spoonfeed them, but you SHOULD be requiring accountability on a regular basis, only moving to longer periods if they show the initiative to work on something.  If you broke that list up into, say, three or four parts, then every 6 weeks or so he should have to demonstrate his knowledge to you.  And I’d probably ask on a weekly basis to hear how he’s doing.  When the work is reading a book, especially at his age, he needs to be doing DAILY oral and written narration.  THAT is how you know he is getting it.  Do NOT just hand out a book and not expect narration from it.  If this isn’t working, then RIGHT NOW is the time to stop everything else and get habits of attentiveness down and set up accountability measures and work on narration skills.  . You might even consider drawing up a set of “contracts” that he must demonstrate such-and-such on this day or lose privileges.  And make them short enough right now that he can begin to develop the skills.  You might also find out if he knows HOW to set up a study item list and learn it.  How does he do on scripture memorization?  This is a skill and some pick it up on their own and some need to be taught. 

I DO think you are setting yourself up for failure if you just want to give them books and never require narrations from therm after readings.  I understand about time difficulties–I have those myself.  But I am just wasting all our times if I do not insist on the “act of knowing” which is what Charlotte calls narration.  Your son is old enough to be doing some of his narrations in writing, that should help with the time.  If your school is taking so long that you really  have no time for narration, then you need to shorten school days so that this time is available.  It is the whole key to retaining all this education you are trying to do.  And if it’s not retained, what’s the point?  But invest some time in the proper skills–oral and written narration, how to study/memorize–even if it is difficult NOW, because it will pay major dividends LATER.

It is hard to figure out, isn’t it, especially when you’re switching to a different way of teaching. I can share with you what we do here, if that might help. The older boys (ages 11-14) each have a literature book I’ve assigned them at all times. They read about a chapter per day, unless the chapters are extraordinarily long or short, and must give me an oral narration from that book each day. They are also reading living books for science daily, and after each reading, another narration, and the same for their daily independent history reading. I haven’t usually read all these books, so I sit with the book opened to the section they’re narrating, and skim through as they tell me about it, to make sure they’ve gotten the main points. At first, this took a ton of work for them and for me! I know CM said one thorough reading and they shouldn’t reread, and that was our goal, but at first, they really hadn’t developed that skill, so I had to teach them to break it into paragraphs if need be, and make sure they understood the main concept in each.

Now, when I listen to narrations, I’m not mentally checking off to make sure they’ve gotten certain main ideas, because each child will focus in on different things, some of them things I’d not noticed and connections I hadn’t made myself. I do listen to tons of narrations every day, but doing this all year (this was our first year doing narrations across the board), I can see how much they’re learning! Once a week, the 11-year-olds will do a written narration of their history reading, and the 14-year-old has more writing assignments.

I agree with another poster who recommended breaking up the tasks with expectations and goals, for things like the memorization. I have a really hard time sticking to that myself, so I know that doing things regularly really helps me. For example, if we do Bible memorization or whatever other memory thing we’re working on every day at snack time, that helps a ton. Perhaps there is once a day you can schedule the grammar work, at least until he’s in a groove with learning it, and then schedule and check in once a week for that particular skill?

You aren’t setting yourself up for failure if you use CM, because really, the lady required a lot of her students! And so it’s up to us to figure out what that means for each of our kiddos, schedule it, and require it. I am hard on them I suppose, in the read-a-book front, but it’s school, right? And they do come to enjoy it even if not all are dying to pick up a book for fun (but some are!).

Prayers for peace and direction for you as you decide what direction to go in. I can’t speak for everyone else, but I know I’m still figuring it out as I go along as well!

Blessings,

Aimee