Value of Narration…

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  • April 1, 2012 at 1:17 pm
    Francis2911
    Participant

    Hi all. Well, I have been reading the Charlotte Mason Companion in order to better understand the Charlotte Mason approach to homeschooling. I think this gentle approach to learning will really suit my son. However, I am having difficulty understanding the value behind narration. I think I understand it as having the child tell you what he can remember from what was read to him. However, what purpose is this serving the child? Charlotte Mason’s recommendation is to wait until the child is 10 to begin written narration, which seems quite old to begin to teach writing.

    I do like the CM style, but please help me understand the value of oral narration as it seems like the crux to the method itself.

     

    Thank you!

    April 1, 2012 at 3:30 pm
    suzukimom
    Participant

    While  the child does the work in his mind of remembering what he read/heard/saw, and forming the words to express himself – that process cements the information into his mind so he learns it on a whole new level.

    April 1, 2012 at 6:12 pm
    momto2blessings
    Participant

    I agree with suzukimom.   This is teaching beginning writing, because when you write on paper the hard part is forumulating your thoughts first! And they are doing physical writing through copywork and dictation.  Blessings, Gina

    April 1, 2012 at 6:31 pm
    missceegee
    Participant

    This might be helpful – http://simplycharlottemason.com/2010/09/29/composition-the-charlotte-mason-way-language-arts-part-5/

    April 1, 2012 at 8:14 pm
    Evergreen
    Member

    Having started homeschooling with a literature based curriculum that was heavy on books and comprehension questions, moved toward a bit of classical and now happily settled on CM, I can see SO many benefits to narration. First, I am coming to understand this idea of education as the science of relations, and that as the child reads/listens, he is forming relations with things he’s learning about. Narration is a way of:

    a. forming the habit in the child of paying close attention, and

    b. as the child “retells” what they remember, the material becomes their own and not something I lecture and expect them to spit out. It is a trickier skill (and much more valuable IMO) to be able to retell a good part of something after one hearing or reading, than to page back through a text and answer comprension questions.

    In addition, narration is a great prewriting skill, as others mentioned. The child learns to tell a story in chronological order, remember important points and characters, and to do this without a lot of prompting and teaching, as he is doing what comes naturally in most cases; retelling what they’ve heard.

    We haven’t used narration as our sole writing program, and I think if you check out the SCM curriculum guide, you’ll see they recommend other resources beginning in second grade, which will work on beginning writing skills. In our house, we’ve used some of those as well as another old-fashioned CM-style resource for writing. We’ve also used the children’s narrations for writing before age 10, in this way: once in a while, I will write a child’s narration down for him, and then, over a period of days, he will copy the narration (we set the timer for 15 minutes per session). In this way, he is writing his own words, but not being held up by wondering how to spell every word or trying to remember punctuation or how to form a certain letter. He gets the practice of writing the sentences correctly, looking at good writing as he does it, and they are his own thoughts!

    This is another excellent article on a CM-educating mom’s take on narration. I think she also explains this very well.

    http://wildflowersandmarbles.blogspot.com/2010/07/considering-language-arts-narration.html

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