Written Narration Question

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  • andream
    Participant

    Thanks for in advance for any feedback.

    My oldest, turning ten in four weeks, is beginning written narration. Here is what I’m having her do, does this seem right? Should I make some changes?

    We are using Beautiful Feet for American History and we are keeping a notebook with that, it has some copywork that go with the pictures. I read her the first 8-10 pages of the Leif the Lucky book by the D’Aulaires.  She then sat and wrote her narration of what had been read.  I told her not to be concerned about spelling or punctuation, the idea was just to get the words in her head on the paper.  The next day we looked over it together and made corrections as I typed up what she had written. I typed it with correct spelling and punctuation (I think!) We discussed some things she did right, like beginning sentences with capitals and a few things to improve such as not beginning every sentence with the word, “so.”  The following day she began copying her polished narration into her history notebook.  She has worked on copying it each school day a little at a time, but it has taken almost 8 days to finish!   She has other writing she is doing in her other daily work (cursive copywork, easy grammar, spelling you see), so I guess that’s why it’s going slowly.

    My question: Is this slower pacing appropriate?  By the time she does her next written narration it will probably be about the next person in history, so I guess it’s okay that she’s not writing a full paper on Leif, right???

    Here is what she wrote, is this the type of thing I should be looking for from this age? (Not where she came up with “pushed out.”  : )

    Written Narration Leif the Lucky July 2, 2015

    Eric the Red had a bad temper! He lived in Norway, but since he had such a bad temper, he got pushed out. So, he sailed to Iceland, but since he had such a bad temper, he got pushed out again! Then he sailed to a land and he called it Greenland. He thought it was a good place to live, so he went back to Iceland to get his family. He told stories to his friends, then they wanted to go to Iceland and they followed him to Iceland. A storm rolled on and Eric told his son, Leif, to climb up the ship and take the dragon head off the ship because he thought the spirits would be mad. The storm was so bad that some of the ships went home. Finally, they got there.

    Melanie32
    Participant

    Hi there! I think your daughter’s written narration is wonderful for her age! It sounds like you’re handling things well. My only caution would be the correcting part. I don’t think I would edit her narrations at all for a while. I think Charlotte Mason recommended holding off on corrections until they were more comfortable with written narrations and had been doing them for a while.

    It also seems like there would be no need to do copywork on the same days that your daughter is copying her own work.

     

    HollyS
    Participant

    I would just make a note of spelling words and gramatical errors and address one issue at a time.  Eight days seems like a long time to spend on one narration.   My DC would be discouraged by picking apart every last detail.  The big thing at first is just learning to get their ideas on paper.

    andream
    Participant

    Thank you for your feedback. We only spent one day making a few corrections and I typed it for her. The thing that has been taking so long is her writing out the corrected copy. Yes, eight days to finish one written narration seems discouraging.

     

    am I undestanding correctly that it is okay to just have her write her narration and make no corrections for awhile until she is comfortable with getting her words down on paper?  That sounds less discouraging, but I thought it wasn’t good for them to be looking at incorrect spelling. Hmmm. What to do?

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