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Writing Out the Oral Narration – help please.
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For younger children who are not yet doing written narrations, I’ve seen the suggestion to have Mom write up oral narrations once in a while. My few attempts at this have been slightly disastrous. The children (DS7 and DS8) start off excited about the idea, but then soon begin talking more quickly than I can write or type. DS will begin speaking in lovely complete sentences and then in the excitement to tell more, it soon becomes a rambling. Both boys get frustrated if I request “slow down a little” and don’t like it when I don’t write exactly what is spoken or gently point out they didn’t give me a complete thought/sentence. If I insist we work harder on the sentence delivery, it really becomes time consuming and painful for all. This is one thing we’re never in a hurry to repeat. Yet, aside from daily copywork, both boys do no other writing, journalling or even picture doodling so I feel it’s something we should be trying to figure out.
How are you all doing this? In addition to typing, I’ve tried doing it on a white board. This worked a little better though I seemed to be just writing in point form to keep up. Even I could type 500 words a minute, if I were to type up exactly what one of my boys said, it would include at least a bit of rambling and certainly wouldn’t be a written sentence structure worth looking at afterwards.
Is there a process or stress free method to this that I’m missing?
Any suggestions welcome!
Andi
I don’t know if this is how it ‘should be’ done, but I really don’t worry about sentence structure or anything. I just transcribe exactly what DD6 says. My handwriting isn’t great, either. (Although I suppose I could make a ‘rough copy’ and then copy it neatly into her book.)
My purpose in doing it, however, is to have a record of the narration, not to teach grammar or anything. I think it will be good in the future to be able to go back and see how her language skills have improved as she progresses. All the recorded narrations also accompany a picture, so it makes a good little book to be able to look back and enjoy remembering the stories she read. She enjoys seeing her words with the picture.
As for keeping up, the first few times I had to ask her to wait for me to catch up, which got her a bit off track. Once she got used to it, though, she started pausing and looking for me to nod or say “And then?” to know that she can start again. It actually improved her narrations, I think, because it forced her to stop and think, rather than just ramble.
One thing I do to help with the ‘incomplete thought’ problem is that sometimes I’ll stop her and read back what she said, just to check and see if she wants to add anything. I don’t point out an error or tell her that it needs to be fixed in any way, I just read it and let her decide if it says what she wanted it to say.
Joanne
I don’t know if I can but too much help because my dd loves it when I write down her narrations and often tells me where to put the punctuation marks in! I can’t keep up with how fast she speaks either, so I usually need to ask her to wait for a minute here and there so I can catch up with her. If she “loses her place” while waiting for me, I usually just read back to her the part I’ve written down already and then she keeps going from there. I also agree with Joanne’s thoughts above as well, very much mirrors my thoughts as well.
HTH at least a little bit…
Jen
I do this daily with my middle children (ages 4, 6, and 7) and am similar to the others.
– I don’t correct the way my children are speaking, this is not grammar or elocution lessons, it is an oral narration to see what relationships they have formed with a topic (at my house usually science or history). Save grammar and speaking in complete sentences lessons for other times.
– I do write their exact wording.
– I write my children’s words and say “pause” so I can catch up. Then I reread what I’ve just written of their exact words and nod at them to continue from there.
– Some people have suggested using a handheld tape recorder to capture narrations so you don’t have to hurry to keep up or pause a child’s telling.
This is a great help, ladies, thank you!
I hear you all on this not being a grammar focus and I’ve tried to be so low key about the way they speak their sentences. The funny thing for us is that when I write it exactly as they say it (ramblings and all), it’s the child that is unhappy with how it reads. DS8 totally gets that what he’s dictated is not the way it would read if it were in a book, and then he thinks he’s done a bad job! (this is why I started intervening to help with sentences a little). Sigh.
I do like the way you ladies are all pointing out that this is about what they got from the topic, so perhaps I can turn the boys/attitudes around by reminding them of that. Joanne, the picture idea might be a great idea for us, thank you.
Tristan I see you are doing this daily, how amazing! I hope I can get there.
Do most others feel written version of a child’s oral narration is important to do daily?
thanks again! Blessings, Andi
Andrea,
The reason we do it daily is that in at least one subject every day my children make a notebooking page. For my 11 year old she does all the writing. For my next 3 (7, 6, 4) I’ll write their narration and they illustrate or decorate the page. For other subjects that day we’ll just do oral narration without me recording it in writing. And I should mention that the only reason I do this with the 4 year old is he’s precocious and insists. 😉 The younger three under him couldn’t care less about joining in beyond scribbles on a page.
I type it exactly as spoken and direct them to give me one sentence at a time, retreading the last sentence as needed. Then I have them sit down and read it for themselves and make any corrections. Sometimes they want to change the way the word something, or an incorrect word form such as “brunged” hehe. They also sometimes correct my typos I miss. When they consider it finished I print it as is.
Maybe if you explain before beginning that you want one sentence at a time and then wait for the ok to go on. My son loves this because he can be thinking up his next sentence while I type. My daughter hates it because she narrates more intuitively.
Tara
Tara and Tristan, THANK YOU! I’m jazzed up, we’ll give it a go today! Tara, yes, explaining in advance might work well if they know they use the time to think over what the next sentence will be.
Tristan, thanks for explaining your one-notebooking-page-per-day system. I like this idea (though worry my boys would cringe at having “another” piece of written work, sigh). I’ve read a little about notebooking, but not in detail.
When you have them do a notebooking page once per day, I assume(for your 7 and 6 yr old) this is in addition to copywork? (i.e. because for the notebooking you are the one doing the writing)…yes?
Yes, copywork is separate but I have a firm rule that copywork should take no more than 5 minutes. I want them to aim for ‘best work’ on copywork and so the selection is short.
What other “written work” do you do at this age? We only do one other, they write a story or letter or some such thing once a week. For my 6 and 7 yo this is about 3-5 sentences. When they finish they read it to me, they can call someone special and read to them, etc. I only point out one single thing that was a mistake (be it misspelling, writing capitals in the middle of a word, forgetting a punctuation mark at the end of a sentence, etc). We spend two minutes talking about the mistake and we’re done. At this age it is more about exposure for me. They have more than a decade to learn to use the rules of grammar consistently.
At my 11 year old’s age she does 1 writing piece like this a week, longer of course, and she and I take one of those every two weeks or so to polish up and take through the editing process.
Can you tell I’m pretty laid back on all this? They learn so much by listening to and reading well written living books that the actual effort of teaching becomes minimal as the get older. As you said, they can ‘hear’ when what they wrote sounds wrong. Over time they’ll learn to correct that, but in elementary school is not the time to worry over it. At least not at my house! Everyone is different and that’s okay too!
Thanks again for all the tips! DS9 and I made an attempt yesterday on a write-up of his oral narration. Our first in quite some time. While it still seemed to be a LONG process, I think it ended up better than in the past (though NO interest in adding a picture or adding to it on his own, which is ok I guess, at least we made progress!)
Tristan I love the system you’ve got going with your kids and choosing one “correction” at a time – so gentle. As for your question on other written work we do — at this point, almost nothing, sigh! Both DS7.5 and DS9 could read, read, and read until the cows come home, but ask them to pick up a pencil to write something, anything (or even pick up a marker or paint brush to draw) and they are full of complaints. No confidence, no interest – at all. This writing “issue” is one of the reasons I was drawn to CM back in January, after our first 8 months of hs’ing brought struggle upon struggle for anything that required any kind of workbook/writing. I feel so fortunate to have found SCM and this group because you’re all so inspiring and the boys are doing so much better now that we focus on oral narration as our main language arts exercise.
So the only time my boys will even give writing half a chance without complaint is the odd letter to grandparents for thank you or Christmas or Birthday letters. Anything else, zero interest and even the letters are far and few between. Mild complaints about our daily copywork, but they always do it. I’ve been following all the SCM advice on this and I’m trying just to not worry about “composition” until age 10. (though I might take your idea Tristan and try at least a more regular routine for the letter writing to family)
I do know that part of it is confidence. DS9 gets frustrated when he attempts to write something (i.e. family letter) and struggles so much through the spelling. I’m hoping that we may soon be ready for Spelling Wisdom and hopefully that will build the confidence at an easy pace.
thanks again for the great suggestions ladies! Blessings, Andi
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