Hope someone can help me out with a question about written narrations: I’m looking to transition my 10 y.o. from oral to written narrations. My question is, should written narrations be entirely from memory? If so, are there exceptions such as copying/drawing maps or diagrams or should it be absolutely no peaking? I’ve been reading a lot about notebooking, which seems to be a written narration except it’s open-book (with the option to copy interesting quotes, diagrams etc.). Am I right about that? Which do you do and why? Any thoughts? Thanks so much!
Not completely sure we all do the exact same thing, but if my 10yo chose to do a drawing, I would ask that it be from memory first. Then, I’d let him add details from the book/map later, if he still wanted to.
If it’s notebooking, then you can let your child copy straight from the text. That would be more like copywork and not a written narration.
Hopefully someone else who is better at explanations will chime in!
I would think that if it is narration, they would still write after only one text reading. If they wanted to go back and add an interesting quote or some such, I would allow it, AFTER the narration was written and shared with me. I would probably tell my child to get out all s/he was thinking. Then the student could put a little star or something in the spot where s/he wanted to add the quote or map, so it is not forgotten. Then the student could add it.
CM said: “I dwell on the single reading because, let me repeat, it is impossible to fix attention on that which we have heard before and know we shall hear again.”
She also wrote: “The simplest way of dealing with a paragraph or chapter is to require the child to narrate its contents after a single attentive reading, –one reading, however slow, should be made a condition.”
Thanks so much – that’s an idea I hadn’t thought of and I appreciate your comparison of notebooking to copywork – I had seen it compared to narration, but I kind-of agree that it’s more like copywork. Thanks for your help!
Oh thank you for the explanations and inspiring quotes – I’ll put them in my arsenal of personal pep-talks that I’m sure I’ll be drawing on when the inevitable DS protests begin 🙂