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AmyRobynne
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| Posted: July 03 2012 at 11:26pm | IP Logged
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Both my sons are reading fluently (entering 1st and 3rd grade). Part of me would like to just do whatever Mater Amabilis suggests so I don't need to make any curriculum decisions. But I don't feel like MA (or any other pre-packaged curriculum) meshes with my kids' uneven skills. It evens out a bit by 3rd grade but my 1st grader reads well and part of why I want to homeschool is to tailor their curricula to what they're ready for. Then I need to factor in the fact that his handwriting is below average and he doesn't like to write.
I started reading a blog someone here linked to (Wildflowers and Marbles) and she points out that the worst approach is to do traditional language arts and try to use CM methods on top of it until you're spending hours and hours doing way too much stuff. Copywork, narration, and dictation are pretty foreign to me -- it seems like they're big in homeschooling but never mentioned in schools. I had been leaning towards IEW-based writing, KISS grammar, and a cursive program for my 3rd grader and All About Spelling and PAL Writing for my 1st. I definitely want to use living books as much as possible.
Now I just feel sort of lost in all the choices. Would the CM approach be to dump all those program and just do copywork, narration, and dictation from the history and catechism programs I'm considering? With extra literature thrown in there? Is spelling and grammar just supposed to sort of happen by itself? How does it work when I have 2 kids who can mostly read the same sorts of books although my older son could probably handle some that would go over the younger's head?
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Mackfam
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| Posted: July 04 2012 at 11:20am | IP Logged
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Welcome, welcome AmyRobynne!!!  I'm so glad to have you here with us!!
Before we get started, just so you know who's sitting on the other side of this screen this morning....
AmyRobynne wrote:
| I started reading a blog someone here linked to (Wildflowers and Marbles) |
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That would be me. So glad you stopped by!
You asked a lot of questions, and some of them require a little context so I hope you'll think it ok if my response goes into some detail!
Now, here's the part where I get to give a little bit more context about this statement:
AmyRobynne wrote:
| and she points out that the worst approach is to do traditional language arts and try to use CM methods on top of it until you're spending hours and hours doing way too much stuff. |
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The reason I am NOT an advocate of CM methods: (narration, copywork, dictation) along WITH reading comprehension, book reports, vocabulary programs, spelling programs, penmanship workbooks is because it is a recipe for overwhelming a child. Charlotte Mason methods are VERY rigorous and require effort, thought, and organization from the child. But here is where the two different methods (traditional workbook/text and CM methods) differ. Charlotte Mason methods always meet the child right where he is developmentally and seek to draw out what the child knows. More traditional workbook/texts are set up so that you can easily measure and quantify what a child may OR may not know and the methods sometimes assume a level of skill or an ability to reason in the abstract that the child may not be ready for.
Here's an example:
Both methods start here:
In reading literature we begin with the reading and then we seek to find out what the child took from their reading.
Reading Comprehension questions
Ask pre-considered questions eliciting an answer from the child, assuming the child picked up on a particular theme, outcome, factor, idea. These can actually be very great discussion starters for high school students, but are almost always overwhelming for elementary students and some middle schoolers. They will emphasize what the child doesn't know and you and the child will feel the weight of that. You'll wonder if the child *got it*. Should he re-read? You give him the book and he becomes accustomed to reading and re-reading in order to provide an analysis of a story. The joy of reading the story may dissipate at this point as the child seeks only to find the answer to the question he couldn't remember.
CM Method of Narration
-- "Tell me what you just read" --
The student tells back, in their own words. When the child is young (say 6 yo to about 8 or 9), the narration is simple. It can be detailed or succinct, but it is a very simple telling back. The child naturally learns how to order their thoughts as they narrate to you. They must bring their full attention to their reading, because they only get to read once. As they get older and mature and are ready on their own for moving into the abstract, they begin to apply logic and their own reasoning to their narrations, offering their own thoughts and observations as part of the telling back. This happens very naturally. A child around the age of 10 or 11 begins to transition into writing their narrations. All of this builds a writer gently, naturally. Narration meets the child as person right where they are developmentally. The skills the child must bring to the table to narrate are not easy and so there is always gentle stretching and building, but never does a narration ask a child to step outside of his/her own understanding. What does the child learn from a simple narration?
Ordering thoughts
Pre-writing skills
Vocabulary
Imitating beautiful thoughts expressed in the literature read
Attention to detail
Organization of the story in their mind from big picture to detail
Internalizing the story
Developing opinions of a character or story based on reason, faith, understanding
Oral expression
....ALL of this translates directly into their writing!!! When they begin to write you can expect these same skills in written form.
And that's just narration. Copywork and Dictation accomplish a similar and equally staggering number of skills under the cloak of a simple lesson.
Briefly....
Copywork....teaches penmanship through beautiful, living, worthy literature. Short lesson: 5 - 15 minutes (depending on the child) with the purpose being best effort and perfect execution of penmanship....whether that's starting out and writing ABC's or printing sentences or learning cursive.The child is not stretched in overwhelming ways because the main point of copywork is best execution within a short period of time. That may mean one word written perfectly in a period of 5 minutes and then the lesson is over. It won't always be like that though (only one word). Skill will develop, fine motor control will catch up, and the child will begin writing and copying beautiful thoughts that will feed and nurture the imagination. Not only are these beautiful thoughts, but they are well written!!! Like the way an author turns a phrase, expresses a passion, seeks to illuminate a tangent. Over the years the child will pick up on the fact that commas separate items in a line, sentences always begin with a capital letter and end with punctuation and so on. They learn what they imitate, and they imitate beautiful, noble, worthy thoughts...well written!
Dictation...teaches grammar with more of a focus and also teaches spelling. Again, the lesson is short, and again the lesson is focused on the living thoughts from worthy literature. I won't go into a dictation lesson too much here mainly because your students are young and wouldn't begin dictation lessons until around 4th/5th grade, but I think you can begin to see that these three methods pack a serious punch in terms of their net skills as well as the good habits they develop in the child - habits of attention, persistence, best effort the first time!
Before I get to your specific questions, I want to link you back to another series of posts I wrote about Charlotte Mason language arts methods. I think it might help you wrap your mind around these methods a little more and see how they work in a CM day. In a Charlotte Mason education, philosophy comes before the method. The philosophy is the map and the road, the method is the vehicle we take to get there. You might want to do some reading about the philosophy of CM, the *WHY* of it all, in order to understand better how she could advocate what seems so simple in terms of language arts: narration, copywork, dictation.
Ok...so if you're still with me....
AmyRobynne wrote:
| Both my sons are reading fluently (entering 1st and 3rd grade). Part of me would like to just do whatever Mater Amabilis suggests so I don't need to make any curriculum decisions. But I don't feel like MA (or any other pre-packaged curriculum) meshes with my kids' uneven skills. |
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That's fine! MA can be a fantastic help for you - a hand to hold, if you will. Just give yourself permission to make parallel substitutions when needed...in other words, if you find a literature selection too easy, put in another selection that parallels it in content, style but is more appropriate in terms of ability for your child.
AmyRobynne wrote:
| It evens out a bit by 3rd grade but my 1st grader reads well and part of why I want to homeschool is to tailor their curricula to what they're ready for. Then I need to factor in the fact that his handwriting is below average and he doesn't like to write. |
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Absolutely! Remember what I said about copywork above? It meets the student where they are! So that means that copywork with your 1st grader is about gently stretching him forward from where he is...through a very short lesson emphasizing that he give you his best effort in that short time. And then done! No hair pulling. No page of penmanship. No killing his love of learning. 5 minutes of best effort...and then move on.
AmyRobynne wrote:
| I had been leaning towards IEW-based writing, KISS grammar, and a cursive program for my 3rd grader and All About Spelling and PAL Writing for my 1st. |
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This is a lot of structure for a 1st and 3rd grader. I can't give opinions on these programs since I haven't used them, but I can tell you, I can PROMISE you....that if you use these programs **AND** CM language arts methods you and your children will not be happy in a couple of months. The CM methods are going to meet your young students where they are and gently stretch them and build skills from there. Are they enough all by themselves? Yes, they are! They are rigorous! But here's where they require some faith from us: we have to step outside of workbooks and texts and outside of what brick and mortar schools are doing and let these time-honored methods of language arts work and build naturally and gently over time! Remember, these methods are not unique to CM, they have been in use...in practice since the 5th century BC and the beginnings of Classical Ed and throughout history through Classical Ed!!! These methods have been around WAY longer than workbooks, and they have a proven track record of success! How did Ben Franklin learn? He was self-taught, read fantastic literature, and imitated it to hone his writing skill. (Read his autobiography.)
Adding CM methods to workbook/curriculum programs will overwhelm the child and you in trying to add in subject after subject after subject in compartments. A CM education is centered around those living books, which gives all the language arts lessons their context. There aren't compartments - everything is naturally connected and flows.
AmyRobynne wrote:
| I definitely want to use living books as much as possible. |
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 I'm so glad you're eager to use those living books! They are foundational in a CM education.
AmyRobynne wrote:
| Would the CM approach be to dump all those program and just do copywork, narration, and dictation from the history and catechism programs I'm considering? |
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In a word - YES! And delightfully so! Don't forget your living science and natural history selections, poetry, delightful picture books. Your choices can come from anything LIVING from your day!
AmyRobynne wrote:
| With extra literature thrown in there? |
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You can certainly add literature. More often than not, your history reading IS the literature.
AmyRobynne wrote:
| Is spelling and grammar just supposed to sort of happen by itself? |
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Well, the children do learn but it doesn't *just happen*. You will be very intentional about the choices set before them and ensure that they are introduced to authors and books with worthy thoughts to tell. The children will see the spelling and grammar (mechanics and usage) in the worthy writing they read, and they will naturally imitate. And you will introduce one basic idea at a time once the children are older (around 4th grade+). You will begin to point out that sentences begin with a capital letter, that proper nouns are capitalized, etc. Basic stuff. You will probably not be teaching infinitives and gerunds in the 4th grade through dictation selections...but you certainly could in high school! There is plenty of time for that. For 1st and 3rd grade, rest assured that in copying good literature, they will begin to notice basic grammar.
AmyRobynne wrote:
| How does it work when I have 2 kids who can mostly read the same sorts of books although my older son could probably handle some that would go over the younger's head? |
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To me, this is the best argument for using CM methods. Let them read! Let them read books that fit them! Read to them aloud, let them read independently, and then let them narrate! They will tell you back what THEY (individually) got from their reading! You can expect very different narrations from both of your children, and both narrations will be RIGHT!
I sure hope this gives you a little more footing to make some decisions for your year upcoming!!! My intention wasn't to overwhelm, but to give you some context so you could consider in light of the *why*, or the philosophy of CM. Consider your year upcoming *a year for learning*, and give yourself permission to be gentle on yourself...and to make some mistakes! They're going to happen, and the good news is - we all make them!!!!! Every year!!! Yep! No one here is perfect or has it all figured out! I have made some WHOPPERS!  I happen to consider every year *a year for learning*, and every mistake, challenge, bump in the road...challenges me to dig deeper, understand a little more, make fresh changes that reflect our family philosophy of education, and get creative.
Please do come back and challenge me to nail some of these ideas down a little more if they're still murky!
__________________
Jen Mackintosh
Wife to Rob, mom to dd 19 , ds 16, ds 11, dd 8, and dd 3
Wildflowers and Marbles
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SallyT
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| Posted: July 04 2012 at 12:24pm | IP Logged
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What Jen said! I think this was a beautiful explication of the way a CM education works.
We have been a bit more eclectic in our own approach: with my current 3rd- and 4th-graders, I have used, for example, additional grammar and handwriting resources (CHC's Language of God and handwriting programs), which are VERY gentle and short and definitely play a secondary role of reinforcing conventions of usage (helps us to notice things in our reading/copywork). I have been considering a more elaborate language-arts program for next year, largely because I had been suspecting my 8yo of having some difficulties which, according to her test results, it appears she doesn't have. So I think I'm back to "minimal" as a setting for anything beyond reading and copywork.
My rising 9th-grader did virtually no "formal" language-arts programs of any kind during his elementary years (the reasons why my youngers *do* do them have far more to do with their/my need for a just-turn-the-page-and-do-the-next-thing element in our days than with their importance as educational tools -- they're what I could dump and be fine with dumping, except that the kids enjoy them).
Meanwhile, the 9th-grader was, from the age of 6, a voracious self-taught reader who struggled with handwriting; to this day, his handwriting is not wonderful, though it's not notably worse than that of many boys his age -- and FWIW, many, many boys struggle with penmanship and fine-motor skills early on, more than girls. Through his elementary years, he read, was read to, and did a lot of copywork. Until the age of about 12, he was a very reluctant writer -- what he did write was basically grammatical and correctly spelled, but getting it out of him was like trying to milk a rock. Again, I think this is very, very normal.
By seventh grade, when I did begin requiring more written work, he was able to produce reasonably well-written paragraphs and one-page papers, kind of instinctively. Then this past year, as an 8th grader, he took an upper-division, writing-intensive history course at the college where my husband teaches (it was a WWII course, and the prof let him in because he's doing an oral history of local WWII veterans for his Eagle project), and although he was officially just sitting in, he took the midterm and final and wrote all 7 papers for the class, including the 12-page research paper, and made an A. I basically taught him college-prep writing the night before the first paper was due: here's how you write a thesis sentence; here's how you organize the info you've already included. And he was off to the races.
This, from a kid whose entire background in language arts for years and years was reading and doing copywork. He is bright and motivated and maybe a little unusual, but I don't think he's really that unusual. He really did internalize how written English is supposed to sound, and I hardly had to teach him basic mechanics, because he'd internalized those, too. When issues do come up in his writing, I take them as teachable moments, and he generally doesn't make the same mistake twice. He will be doing formal, structural grammar as a high-school student, because I do think that understanding how our language works is massively important, and despite the fact that it really is possible to teach the nuts and bolts of college-level writing in 15 minutes or less, on an already-written draft, we are also doing formal composition, so that we think deliberately about essay-writing as an art and a craft.
It's age-appropriate to do these things now; if I had tried to push too much when he was younger (as I might have been tempted to do, because he's always been bright), he would have hated writing and been convinced that he couldn't do it. The beauty of copywork is that it gives them a way to a) practice the mechanics of handwriting without the additional burden of having to think of what to say, which is VERY hard for young writers; and b) practice writing excellent English sentences, poems, and paragraphs, correctly spelled and punctuated without, again, the burden of having to come up with it all themselves. I really think that it's important not to try to tie those two things together -- writing and thinking of what to write -- until far later in a child's education than the educational establishment generally introduces that process.
Again, we're not really practitioners of a pure CM education, but we have used and adapted MA and kept CM principles as our touchstone. Her methods are the core of our homeschool, and I have seen clearly that, minimal as they may seem, they work. That's been our experience, anyway.
Sally
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AmyRobynne
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| Posted: July 07 2012 at 1:10am | IP Logged
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Wow, thanks so much to both of you for writing such detailed responses!
Jen, I did read your whole LA post series -- I'd gotten through most of it when I wrote the initial post. I've been reading "When Children Learn" too. I think I'm getting bogged down with philosophy. I used to put myself to sleep in college trying to get through my few pages of required philosophy reading. So I definitely appreciate your LA posts summing things up so well.
It feels like a big black & white decision whether to go CM-style or not although I'm sure, like everything else, it doesn't have to be like that.
I talked to my husband (who has been teaching high school for 7 years and knows education lingo) and his suggestion was that if I decide to use narration and copywork as the primary way to gauge their learning, I need to have some way of knowing whether they're getting something out of their reading. His school uses the core knowledge sequence, so he uses that as an example, but said that if I expect them to know what nouns and verbs are by the end of the year, I would need to point them out in their copywork. Maybe knowing nouns and verbs doesn't matter so much, but what does? He thinks I should figure that part out. I think there are books by Ruth Beechick that go over some of those guideposts, but I might be mistaken.
So, I'm still on the fence.
What I do know:
I want to avoid pre-packaged textbook-based curricula.
I gave both boys a learning-styles test and they both leaned towards visual learners and they're both creators.
They love reading. I want to encourage that.
I don't want them to need to write too much.
I'm mostly just thinking out loud to help myself here, I don't expect any magical answers.
I bought the syllabus for RC History's Connecting with History Vol 2 curriculum today after checking it out at a friend's house. If you aren't familiar with it, it's set up in a friendly way for CM and classical approaches. It's essentially a giant book list with possible creative writing and activity options plus narration/dictation suggestions. So I have a great list of living books to start from and can figure out whether we'll be doing projects or not so much.
I'm not sure if I've made any progress since I last wrote, but I've definitely read everything you've put out there and I didn't want to leave the post unanswered.
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JodieLyn
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| Posted: July 07 2012 at 10:13am | IP Logged
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AmyRobynne - welcome!
Remember that there are also ways other than schoolwork to figure out parts of speech for instance.. schoolhouse rock videos are quite fun and not really schoolwork but you do learn that a noun is a person place or thing. Or doing some madlibs for fun.. these are great for car trips or waiting rooms or such since they can be done as a group.
But anyway, while you don't want to double up the schoolwork, there are ways to help identify things that you find important and still be giving the CM method a try without being afraid of losing those things. And yet not overloading the kids either.
__________________
Jodie, wife to Dave
G-18, B-17, G-15, G-14, B-13, B-11, G-9, B-7, B-5, B-4
All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
-Sir Walter Scott
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CrunchyMom
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| Posted: July 07 2012 at 10:49am | IP Logged
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AmyRobynne wrote:
| It feels like a big black & white decision whether to go CM-style or not although I'm sure, like everything else, it doesn't have to be like that. |
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It is, sort of, in that as Jen pointed out, you don't want to do both. You don't want to double up on LA materials out of fear that CM isn't enough. I like looking to SallyT's plans and posts on her blog for inspiration if I decide I want to add a little something more. You CAN be eclectic, but it can be tempting to want to do CM and then add on traditional stuff "just in case", which again, as Jen points out, is overwhelming.
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| I talked to my husband (who has been teaching high school for 7 years and knows education lingo) and his suggestion was that if I decide to use narration and copywork as the primary way to gauge their learning |
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Narration, and eventually written narration, does help with this from a content standpoint. Narration is SO foundational because it is the tool of the teacher in knowing what the child is learning, but it is also the tool of the child as they learn to read critically and organize their thoughts.
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| I need to have some way of knowing whether they're getting something out of their reading. I would need to point them out in their copywork. Maybe knowing nouns and verbs doesn't matter so much, but what does? He thinks I should figure that part out. I think there are books by Ruth Beechick that go over some of those guideposts, but I might be mistaken. |
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I think that these things do matter, but *when* they are introduced and learned may not matter so much as conventional methods would indicate. Is it important for a First grader to know them? *I* don't think so. But, I do think that introducing Latin with my third grader will be effective in introducing these concepts without adding a separate grammar study just yet. I do anticipate adopting Jen's approach of introducing a formal grammar study 3 times in the course of our home education. There are also living grammar books to introduce these ideas (Heller's picture books on the parts of speech as well as Nesbit's Grammarland) either in an informal way or the CM approach of reading and narrating.
I think of learning grammar like learning music theory. It is essential in becoming a truly accomplished musician. BUT it is more essential to develop an ear for good music, and it is the good ear that makes the most sense of the theory once it is introduced. In the early years, I think the emphasis should be on training the ear for good literature, and once that is in place, acquiring the theory will happen much more readily. Sort of like the emphasis on immersion approaches in introducing foreign language to young children.
__________________
Lindsay
Five Boys(6/04) (6/06) (9/08)(3/11),(7/13), and 1 girl (5/16)
My Symphony
[URL=http://mysymphonygarden.blogspot.com/]Lost in the Cosmos[/UR
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SallyT
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Yes to what Lindsey says, re grammar as analogous to music theory!
I think there are several approaches, at least, to choose from in deciding how to ensure that some of this learning happens at a foundational level without compromising the gentle-but-rigorous spirit of a CM education (whether you offer a "pure" CM education, or something more eclectically "in the spirit of").
1. There is Jen's very good and thorough approach, as detailed in her LA posts, doing formal grammar at three "touchpoint" stages during the child's education, but integrating it continually through copywork and dictation.
2. There's my own current method, which is to do some formal grammar yearly from the beginning, but VERY gently and minimally, in a sort of spiral approach. We began by using the Emma Serl Language Lessons books recommended in MA and other CM curricula, but they didn't really fly with my kids. I use CHC's Language of God series, which are workbooks and not really "living," but accomplish much the same goal, in my view, of introducing concepts in grammar and usage via very short lessons roughly twice a week.
My just-finished-second-grader, for example, does know nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs (though when we do Mad Libs, I still have to remind her which is which, and I think that's totally normal) and understands the concept of a sentence vs. a fragment. She knows that sentences have to have something which acts (a subject) and an action (the predicate). She's covered basic punctuation, captitalization, and other details of usage, though at this stage those things don't really translate into her own writing so much -- still, if I point something out, she knows what the right usage is much of the time. Again, this seems normal and age-appropriate, especially as I know we'll be passing through much of the same territory again and again in the next few years on the same gentle basis.
I view the role of this part of our program as a kind of highlighter. It helps me to remember to point things out in copywork, so that the copywork does become an application of concepts (though I don't necessarily go looking for copywork which illustrates whatever she's covering in Language of God at a given time). I did not do so much of this with my 14-year-old, though he did do some Emma Serl, but it seems to work well with my current primary-years children and with my fuddled menopausal brain -- I find that I need to be kept on track more than I used to, hence the "turn the page" element in all our days.
We also began reading Grammar-land last year during our Morning Basket time, and the kids enjoyed it. I'm planning to read it again this year.
3. There is the role of foreign-language learning, which also teaches grammar, especially if you do a schematic kind of course. In the early years, I lean towards a more inductive, immersion-type, unstructured introduction to foreign language, keeping our formal grammar as part of the "English" segment of the day, but you *can* very well introduce basic grammatical concepts through another language. At the very least, a foreign language will highlight these issues in English and provide a further reinforcement. I have heard foreign-language teachers lament their students' lack of knowledge of English grammar (this is mostly on the high-school and college level) and say that knowing the basics of English would make learning Latin, or German, or whatever, much easier, but I think you could have an endless chicken-egg argument on that subject!
I understand where your husband is coming from, I think. I'm a former classroom teacher (high-school and college-level English) and definitely a convert to homeschooling -- when my oldest child started school, this was the LAST thing I ever expected to be doing. One thing I've come to see over the past nine years is that so much of institutional school, especially at the early-elementary level, is an attempt to recreate what would normally go on at home, *in a home with literate parents who read and talk about things like how a sentence works.*
Just being exposed to books and even a little writing via something like copywork means that when you do point out a noun to your child, or point out that a sentence has two basic parts, it's not like you're speaking mumbo-jumbo. Your child will get it far more readily than a child whose whole home experience (if he's even there except in the evenings) is taken up with watching television, and there's no family dinner table, etc. My 18yo is babysitting some kids this summer who have that kind of home life (split between the two households of divorced parents, sadly ), and she comes home marveling at what those children don't know, *because of the poverty of their home life,* which is so normal in contemporary American culture as to be terrifying. So much of school is aimed at children like that, compensating for what they aren't getting in the natural course of things; we live in a culture where you can't, anymore, assume that anyone knows what a sentence even is. My husband has asked college students how they write a sentence, and they say, "Well, I just write some words, and then I stop." And then he comes home and beats his head against the wall. (of course, there are chicken-egg arguments to be had on this topic, too . . . )
The fact that you and your husband are educated, literate, and know what to worry about regarding your children's education means that you probably don't need to worry about it. Not that you then need to do nothing, but that it won't take a titanic effort on your part to get them to learn it, especially if you're at all mindful about the ways in which your whole life together is a learning experience.
This is a great conversation, by the way. Part of the reason I have so much to say is that your questions are helping me to re-clarify my own thoughts as I prepare for another year. It's so easy to try to look back at my older children when they were at these ages and just be really foggy about how they ever got from where they were then to where they are now. I keep thinking, "What did I do, and how am I going to get the younger kids to that same place?" Of course the answer is that the younger kids are different animals, and I in some ways am a different animal from the mother who first had second- and third-graders. So it truly helps me to talk through things with somebody just starting out, because *I* come away learning a lot.
Sally
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Abandon Hopefully
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4Real Forums : Language Arts Come Alive
Topic: Educating an early reader
