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kristacecilia
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| Posted: Feb 25 2010 at 12:06pm | IP Logged
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Okay, ladies. Take pity and humor me for a few minutes.
I just don't understand exactly what narration is.
I do understand that it is the child relating back what he has read to you, but I really am not getting how this translates into an actual conversation.
Maybe it's my overtired, pregnant mind, but I just don't get it!
Could someone write out a script for me of what a narration would sound like?
Also:
What age/grade is a good time to start narrations?
When you do begin narrations, what do they sound like?
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SuzanneG
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| Posted: Feb 26 2010 at 12:55am | IP Logged
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Hi, kristacecilia!
This is from Basics of a Charlotte Mason Education at Simply Charlotte Mason:
Quote:
When you ask a child to narrate, you’re asking him to tell back in his own words what he just saw, heard, or read. The narration can be oral or written or drawn — whatever. Because the child must think through the information and determine how to present it, mixed with his own opinion and impressions, this method of evaluation requires a much higher thinking level than mere fill-in-the-blank or answer-the-posed-question-with-a-fact methods. When requesting a child to narrate, word the question in an open, essay-type form, such as “Tell all you know about _____” or “Describe _____.” (See more ideas for narration)
If a book you’re using gives a list of Discussion Questions, first ask the child to tell you all he knows about what was just read, then use only selected questions to cover any information he omitted. |
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There is lots of good narration reading here at Ambleside's Language Arts Section, scroll down to the NARRATION SECTION, here is a part:
Quote:
| Narration, or oral composition, utilizes many mental functions. Each time your child narrates, he is mentally composing his thoughts and communicating through words. Many specific comprehension skills are learned through narration - sequencing, main idea, details - and it's also good practice in listening and in speaking skills. |
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Quote:
| Written narration never completely replaces oral narration. Creative writing will be an extension of written narration. Current thinking says you have to write to be a writer, but Charlotte Mason's thinking was more along the lines of "you have to read to be a writer." Contrary to our culture's emphasis on self-expression, which often results in self-absorbed, imitative writing, she believed a child needed something inspiring from the outside - in the form of his books - to spark his creativity and give him something worth writing about. |
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And, linking Ambleside's Online Narration Discussion
And, lots of great blog posts at Charlotte Mason Help.
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Suzanne in ID
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SuzanneG
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| Posted: Feb 26 2010 at 1:14am | IP Logged
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kristacecilia wrote:
| Could someone write out a script for me of what a narration would sound like? |
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Here is a narration from my dd about the story of Noah:
Quote:
| God said to make a big boat to Noah. Noah loved God, so Noah obeyed God. And, then Noah made a big boat. He took all of his animals and took all of his animals and put them on the big boat with Noah and his wife. They went to go sail across the ocean. God sent a big flood down on top of the trees and on top of the boat. Noah went to go across with his animals to sail across the sea. When he came back the flood stopped. They all got off the boat and God sent a big rainbow over as a promise. |
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When I type them, I type it exactly as she says. Sometimes I type their narrations, most of the time, I don't. You can also print them out and they can illustrate them. I keep a blog for each child for recording their narrations. And, the illustrated narrations go in their notebooks.
kristacecilia wrote:
| What age/grade is a good time to start narrations? |
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Officially, Charlotte Mason and others suggest not doing "official" narrations before the age of 6. But that doesn't mean that you can't talk casually about a story or a page of a story when they are younger! Whenever a child "talks" about a book or an event or their day, they are narrating!
Also, when reading a longer book, you could just stop every couple paragraphs or pages (however often you'd NEED to) and ask what is happening.
kristacecilia wrote:
| When you do begin narrations, what do they sound like? |
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This was one of my daughters first narrations, after listening to her older sisters' readings about the Vikings:
Quote:
| The Vikings wore big helmets and had boats with points on the end. They liked to go in the sea and they fighted with other people. |
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Great! I printed it and she drew a picture of a Viking ship.
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Suzanne in ID
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Mackfam
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| Posted: Feb 26 2010 at 10:57am | IP Logged
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I'm so glad Suzanne linked you to some of my favorite Narration resources, kristacecilia!
Narration, very simply, is retelling. It isn't memorizing things, it is a point by point retelling. This can be done very succinctly - even by an older child. I have a child with an almost photographic memory. I have to be careful to cultivate a point by point retelling rather than a verbatim expression of the reading. Just throwing that in there because when this child was younger I thought it was SO GREAT that narrations were so detailed, but as this child begins writing all those details can be superfluous and not assist in being able to organize thoughts as well. Careful narrations are helpful to this child so that thoughts can be organized in a point by point way.
I love narrations because they show me clearly what a child has learned from a passage or a story. If they didn't comprehend something, it is clear to me from their retelling. Whereas, with reading comprehension questions, a child can become overwhelmed if a question requires a child to draw from an abstract understanding which may not be developed in the child yet.
There is a really excellent chapter on narration in the book, When Children Love to Learn by Elaine Cooper.
When Children Love to Learn wrote:
| Therefore, the goal of any learner is attention. Attentiveness is a vital part of understanding and remembering, for one does not know what one has not attended to. The practice of oral and written narration is a way for the learner to acquire knowledge as well as to be held accountable in an active way for what is seen, read, and heard. |
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In terms of the practice of narration, we really enjoy making use of meal prep times for narrations - we're busy with our hands preparing a meal, setting the table, etc. and that is one of my favorite times for inviting narrations. In fact, one of my favorite memories is a series of lunches last year that my oldest daughter captivated all of us with her narrations of several books from the Swallows and Amazons series.
Hope this helps answer some of your questions about Narrations, kristacecilia!!!
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kristacecilia
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| Posted: Feb 26 2010 at 12:51pm | IP Logged
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Thank you both for the invaluable information.
I am off to read all of it now! :)
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SuzanneG
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Check out these neat Narration Prompt Bookmarks!!!!! 
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SylviaB
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| Posted: March 04 2010 at 6:34am | IP Logged
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I hope kristacecilia doesn't mind if I ask a follow up question. I am just starting to do some narrations with my son.
My son tends to either not give a lot of detail or not do things sequentially.
I saw in the post above it talks about askig question after the narration as a follow up.
Do you normally let them do their whole narration and then ask questions or if they not going sequentially in their narration to you ask throughout the narration "What happened before that", "How did it start" or "What happened next"
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kristacecilia
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I love those narration book marks. I think I will print some off for my DS (who has a thing for bookmarks) and it might just get his brain working towards starting narrations sometime after his birthday.
Thanks!
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Karen T
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I must admit I have used narration sporadically. When I first started homeschooling, my only student was oldest ds, 12 at the time, and he was able to write nice narrations for me. then, when my younger kids started "school" and I tried narrations, it didn't go over well. I persisted for awhile but eventually got tired of the deer in the headlights look I got from dd 
She's now 8 and reads pretty well on her own, but still has a lot of trouble paying attention and actually getting information from what i read aloud to her. I have slowly realized over the last 2 years that she is entirely a non-auditory learner. I think I am/was like that too - always preferred to read something myself than listen. I could never do mental math just from hearing problems out loud, had to write it down either on paper or at least mentally "see" the numbers in my head. We've been using RightStart for math, which relies heavily on mental math and that is what clued me in about dd. And in teaching it, I've gotten much better at doing things mentally, which makes me think she could too, with the right teaching.
So yesterday we were reading our science aloud, and I would stop after each short paragraph and ask her to tell back what she'd heard. Almost nothing. I know this would be such a helpful skill but how do I get her to pay attention to the words she is hearing? The funny thing is, for someone who doesn't learn well auditorily, she's quite auditory herself - constantly singing, humming, repeating things over and over like one line of a song 20 times. Maybe she doesn't "hear" b/c she's got so much going on in her head?? 
Karen T
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Erin
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SylviaB wrote:
My son tends to either not give a lot of detail or not do things sequentially.
I saw in the post above it talks about asking questions after the narration as a follow up.
Do you normally let them do their whole narration and then ask questions or if they not going sequentially in their narration to you ask throughout the narration "What happened before that", "How did it start" or "What happened next" |
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When we started using narrations in our home I never corrected anything. Now I do because I found that if I didn't give gentle guidance they would repeat the same habits and not develop.
First though I would say nothing to your son. Get him confident about narrating, as to when you start gently guiding will depend on his self-confidence.
I would offer gentle prompts about sequential order but if he is not keen to pick up your cues I wouldn't push. I admit though that I don't know if that is the *correct* way, I just bumble along.
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Mackfam
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Karen T wrote:
I must admit I have used narration sporadically. When I first started homeschooling, my only student was oldest ds, 12 at the time, and he was able to write nice narrations for me. then, when my younger kids started "school" and I tried narrations, it didn't go over well. I persisted for awhile but eventually got tired of the deer in the headlights look I got from dd
She's now 8 and reads pretty well on her own, but still has a lot of trouble paying attention and actually getting information from what i read aloud to her. I have slowly realized over the last 2 years that she is entirely a non-auditory learner. I think I am/was like that too - always preferred to read something myself than listen. I could never do mental math just from hearing problems out loud, had to write it down either on paper or at least mentally "see" the numbers in my head. We've been using RightStart for math, which relies heavily on mental math and that is what clued me in about dd. And in teaching it, I've gotten much better at doing things mentally, which makes me think she could too, with the right teaching.
So yesterday we were reading our science aloud, and I would stop after each short paragraph and ask her to tell back what she'd heard. Almost nothing. I know this would be such a helpful skill but how do I get her to pay attention to the words she is hearing? The funny thing is, for someone who doesn't learn well auditorily, she's quite auditory herself - constantly singing, humming, repeating things over and over like one line of a song 20 times. Maybe she doesn't "hear" b/c she's got so much going on in her head??
Karen T |
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I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to include a link to a related thread that quotes your thoughts and insights, Karen.
Narration/Non-Auditory Learner
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Jen Mackintosh
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mamaslearning
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These are awesome.
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EmilyC
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I've been working hard on doing daily narrations with my kids this year. I came up with these narration cards because the kids were getting tired of just retelling all the time. I think it helps to keep things interesting, and it's definitely helping with their narration skills.
Here's afile with all the ideas I used.
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Topic: How does narration work?
