Written Narration-Do U Make Writing Lesson from It?

I use narration instead of testing (no fill-in-the-blanks or multiple choice) to see it they remember or are getting what they just read (or had read to them). I wouldn’t require a lot of written narration from your 4th grader. In fact, it will lighten your load (yes, I read your other post) if you have her stick with oral narration for now.

As far as your 6th grader is concerned, you don’t have to require a written narration every day and certainly not for every subject. You mentioned her ideas were fragmented and she rambled on. That may be the case, but overall, did she seem to have grasped the content you read to her? If so, congratulate her on including good details and save the writing lesson for another time. At this point, you probably want to use written narration as a bridge from telling you what she recalls out loud to getting those details on paper.

In your other post, you mentioned spending 45 minutes with her on Analytical Grammar.  This is just my opinion, but she has plenty of time to learn the finite body of grammar rules, and I think 45 minutes of grammar would exhaust anyone and maybe make them learn to hate writing. If you really want to teach grammar before 7th grade, keep it very short. In fact, on the AG website, they suggest that you can split it up over 3 years. The first year could be completed in 10 weeks….and then you use the reinforcement book once a week, not daily. You could even spend 2 weeks per unit and still be done with it in 20 weeks. You’d only do grammar 2 or 3 days a week.

I wouldn’t agonize over writing or grammar at this point. Just spend a little time on it throughout the week. There are good basic writing programs that some moms on this forum have discussed, and some of them aren’t really used until 7th grade. I would ease up on the writing and grammar focus right now, especially for your younger girls. Just let them enjoy literature and history living books together and then tell you what they recall.

I’d back off some as well.  Are her oral narrations rambling also?  There’s no hurry to move into written ones, especially if she has a hard time focusing her oral ones.  I second Nebby–have her dictate to you and you write or type them–not even necessarily every day.  If she really doesn’t understand yet about basic sentence structure—well, you can work gently on that if you like, but if she’s sensitive I’d not use HER writing for it yet.  Look over what she did, and then you come up with a little passage LIKE it, and show how you could make it into a standard sentence.  For fragmented ideas–it’s really easier to work with this gently during an oral narration.  If she has a hard time focusing for this, encourage her to take a minute to THINK over her reading (make sure it’s not too huge when starting this) and then tell her if she wants to, she can make a few smal notes about what she thinks is most important to tell you, so she can remember them or put them in the order she wants.  Then let her narrate as usual.  Notice and comment on her doing well if she shows improvement.  You might work in these gentler ways for a bit and then reintroduce writing part of it some time in the future.  It is really, really hard to do this–think through your reading, decide what you want to say, and then physically try to catch those ideas and pin them to the paper before you lose them.  LOL  Don’t be discouraged and don’t let her be.  These are things to work on. AND, when you do have narrations and you want to correct something–I often didn’t do it ON the narration paper.  Instead, I’d pick ONE thing (yes, that can be hard, but more than that is overwhelming for the student) and then the next day we’d have a short lesson on THAT ONE THING.  We’d do this 20 times if necessary, for the student to stop making that error.  But I did not write all over the narration page.  

I have been continuing some Daily Grams with my young sixth grader and adding in written narration with drawings. This is very engaging for all my younger children. You can read about it here.

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