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What do your older children read aloud from to practice elocution?
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Here are some related posts I read on the topic of older children reading aloud:
https://simplycharlottemason.com/scmforum/topic/child-reading-aloud/
https://simplycharlottemason.com/scmforum/topic/pathway-readers-for-older-children-10yo/
My dd8 is reading aloud from the Pathway reader, Building Our Lives. I am looking for something for my 11yo 6th grader to read aloud to me twice a week to practice elocution. And I would like to have each child keep this up for their whole education. But I don’t want it to be too long. I looked at a sample of Step by Step, the 6th grade pathway reader, and it seems a little too long. If possible, I would like something focused on good character though. What do you use or suggest?
I thought of poetry, but we really have not done much poetry in the past. Is this better to use for one more experienced in reading aloud already and has heard more poetry? Does it take more skill to read aloud poetry than a short story?
Also, I don’t want to take the fun out of something by requiring it to be read aloud.
In the past, we’ve used the McGuffey Eclectic readers. They are in the public domain and go all the way through high school. Currently I just have my younger two readers using these for phonics.
What I’m doing this year is having them read a poem 3 times per week. Each month they get a new poem, and by the end of the month, they mostly have it memorized. I plan on letting them choose the next poem, but I picked the first couple to get them started. We use ELTL, and while I was planning on having them read the poem from their lesson (each lesson has a poem and short story), I found many are difficult for even me to read! Several are written in English or Scottish dialect and others are written with archaic language. By picking one poem to read repeatedly, they don’t struggle as much with it…and I can make sure it’s a fairly easy poem to read.
Also, they each take a few verses of our daily Bible reading. My 8yo is reading from the reader’s NIV, and the older two read from the ESV. I like that they are getting practice finding verses as well, and it’s not adding any extra time to our week. They read anywhere from a verse or two to 10-12 verses. My 8yo generally reads a verse or two. If it’s a very long reading, I may take a turn. There is a bit of mumbling and quiet reading, but I’m hoping that will continue to improve as they get more practice.
We have done this in the past but I have forgotten about it this year. What about The Children’s Book of Virtues?
I had mine read from the Bible or a poem. We are memorizing a hymn (about one a month) so they say that aloud and the Preamble to the Constitution and will reciTe that as well.
My daughter is 13 and she reads 1 chapter of the Bible aloud daily for Bible study. We take turns on paragraphs for science each day. She reads one poem aloud each week for poetry. I try to have her read her copy work/dictation passages out loud at least once a week as well. I forget this last one a lot!
Some time ago we put greater focus on this as I really wanted to see what my boys do when they come to unknown words. My boys often aloud at a weekly church Bible study as well as to their younger siblings, so I knew that, for both of them, flow and elocution were decent – but I wanted to really push them with long (and very complex) sentences. We used a book called The World’s Greatest Speeches, or some such title – I can’t locate it at the moment but there are several books out there that provide complete speeches from famous people in history.
The book worked brilliantly for my purposes and gave insight that no graded reader could have given me. I have graded readers all the way up to grade 8 and my boys read from them flawlessly. I had to find something really different in order to figure out where they could benefit from help – and as I said, the Speeches book did the trick. (It also sparked a lot of family discussions on some events in history that we’d never really dug into before…a great bonus!)
My boys were 10 and 11 when I did this.
I was just going to suggest speeches. A young fella was in the library yesterday wanting books on speaking. I sent him home with that book of famous speeches and a bio of Frederick Douglass who was a freed slave who became one of history’s greatest orators. He memorized speeches and rehearsed them.
Thanks! I am going to try We the People by Notgrass Co. I had bought it used and had not thought of using it. He can read one page per day, twice a week and finish it in three years when we get through with American History again. It is a nice mix of poems, songs, stories, speeches, newspaper articles, and more that are short enough to fit one page each. And it seems to me from flipping through it that it is chronological. A nice variety; short and interesting. Thanks.
Am I supposed to correct things they read aloud? Do I make notes and wait until they are done reading or interrupt so they don’t keep making the same mistakes as they read on? Do we have “lessons” on what to work on before they read? Or do they just need the practice and will naturally get better, with time?
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