| Author | |
sunny
Forum Pro
Joined: Feb 10 2008
Location: Florida
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 205
|
| Posted: Aug 04 2014 at 1:22pm | IP Logged
|
 |
|
I need some help understanding reading within the Charlotte Mason philosophy and some suggestions for my ds (10). He is an above level, avid reader. In the past we have used CHC reading comprehension stories and questions because I liked the Catholic lessons incorporated. This year, he insists the stories are "waaaayyyyy too easy" for him and wants something more challenging. Am I correct that Charlotte Mason doesnt use study guides, only narration for comprehension? Would you agree (or not) that sometimes, a study guide can lead one to deeper insights? If I were to use a reading comprehension program, does anyone have suggestions?
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
Mackfam
Board Moderator
Non Nobis
Joined: April 24 2006
Location: Alabama
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 14656
|
| Posted: Aug 04 2014 at 3:07pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
Hi Sunny - great questions! I'll do my best to answer them.
You are correct - to my knowledge, Charlotte Mason never used study guides or reading comprehension questions to ascertain whether a child knew the material they read.
She did invite discussions as part of a group narration, and these resembled a Socratic discussion very closely. In a Socratic discussion, one asks questions, but they are all organic, flowing out of the narration, and their purpose is to ask a person to *own* their observations and connections. Since one can't anticipate the original ideas and connections any particular reader will make with a subject, it would be difficult (impossible??) to come up with those sort of questions ahead of time.
There were a few reasons for CM's strong belief and faith in narration as a method:
1) The centuries old method of narration had proven itself - she knew it was a reliable method to "see that he knows" his reading. Since the 5th century BC in the Greek schools (the Paideia), narration was the method completed after a reading. For centuries upon centuries, we narrated. We listened and told back. And then, only recently, have reading comprehension questions entered the scene. So..while it seems common and the default now, it is certainly not the method with the lengthiest track record for successful use in seeing what a child knows from his/her reading.
2) It respects the child as person. Tell back - what you know. It doesn't look to point out the things the child doesn't know, or didn't get - narration asks him to tell back what he knows from what he just read. This means that each child may offer a unique narration - differing in length and content - yet they're all correct. And the method itself never changes. Just tell back what you just read. CM said that the only thing that mattered was the mental effort the child put into the narration.
3) It builds the habit of attention. I've been listening to several Classically educated speakers and reading a number of Classical authors and they're all saying the same thing - we're becoming a culture that is weak in terms of collective memory. We've become so reliant on iPods, phones, internet and other devices to "remember" things for us, that we're losing a sense of common story. We have no capacity to remember and we don't even try because we just figure that we can always just "google it." Stratford Caldecott points out in his book Beauty In the Word that listening with attentiveness builds memory. Narration, while it seems like a simple, even elementary little kiddie-game, is actually quite rigorous and impactful in this area. Narration builds attention - by its very definition, one must pay close attention to one reading to be able to tell back. And in building attention, it is building the good habit of listening. Not listening for key points, not listening to try to find the literary device...and not listening to try to deduce the ulterior motive of the protagonist in a story - but listening just to appreciate the sheer beauty of a thing. It's similar to what happens when you just read a poem aloud to appreciate - and when you pick it apart to examine all of its pieces.
4) It prepares the soil - in other words, narration helps build the habit of attention, which turns into the habit of listening - really listening - which leads into writing and soon enough, a child that can listen well and is able to effectively communicate so that he might enter the Great Conversation. Dr. James Taylor in his discussion of Good books and Great Books observes that students who come to the Great Books before reading the Good books (in other words, we must read Mother Goose before we read Shakespeare because Mother Goose prepares the soil of our mind, makes it fertile and receptive to greater poets such as Shakespeare) quickly become habituated to looking for the point, the moral, the theme - the whatever - and rather, they do not *listen.* They don't hear the story. Because they're essentially looking for all those things that they know they're going to be asked about the Great Books - reading comprehension type questions. Narration prepares the mind to receive ideas, and it builds the habit of attention and listening so that we can even be open to the idea in the first place, and see the idea as beautiful, true and good - rather than seeing it as a literary technique or device.
5) Narration builds a writer. It's hard business. Most view it as unworthy, or at least, far too gentle to be legitimate. This is a mistake. It takes enormous mental muscle to narrate a passage. As that mental muscle grows, a child's mind works harder and harder (building upon each success) and he learns to organize ideas so that he can tell them back in a way that makes sense. Transitioning that to a written narration around the age of 10 means that the child is now writing what he knows, and he has already become skilled and proficient at listening, paying attention, organizing thoughts, and to some extent, exercising his own judgement on the ideas he read, and shares his own connections. Ideas are cemented, and the child knows that reading - after one reading and narration.
6) I do not agree that a study guide leads to deeper insights. I have observed in my own children that if I choose to use a reading comprehension question, they begin to anticipate it. They can't tell me a thing about a story, but they can generally answer a few of the questions. And the reason is that they knew I was going to ask the predictable questions, so they read with that in mind - they read for information, and they missed the beauty of the story. You can't narrate what you don't know - and this is one thing that distinguishes it from a reading comprehension question. Reading comp seeks information - narration seeks knowledge. Does he know? I want insights to spring from knowledge. A child that is ready to move toward more abstract thinking will very naturally begin offering more and more insight and observation in their narration with absolutely no prompting from me.
7) CM did offer some "other ways to use books" in Book 3 of her series, and these suggestions may, at first glance, look more akin to a reading comp question, but each of these were to take place within the framework of a narration:
CM, Volume 3 wrote:
| But this {narration} is only one way to use books: others are to enumerate the statements in a given paragraph or chapter; to analyze a chapter, to divide it into paragraphs under proper headings, to tabulate and classify series; to trace cause to consequence and consequence to cause; to discern character and perceive how character and circumstance interact; to get lessons of life and conduct, or the living knowledge which makes for science, out of books; all this is possible for school boys and girls, and until they have begun to use books for themselves in such ways, they can hardly be said to have begun their education. |
|
|
I use these suggestions with my older children as part of their End of Term examinations, and find that these stretch them toward connections based on what they *know* from their reading.
So...based on my little Apologia of Narration here  , I suppose you can deduce that I cannot offer resources for reading comprehension questions, but I do hope that something here is useful in terms of considering narrations for seeing that he knows. 
__________________
Jen Mackintosh
Wife to Rob, mom to dd 19 , ds 16, ds 11, dd 8, and dd 3
Wildflowers and Marbles
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
sunny
Forum Pro
Joined: Feb 10 2008
Location: Florida
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 205
|
| Posted: Aug 04 2014 at 4:14pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
Awesome answer, Jen! Thank you! All stuff I've known or heard before but I didn't fully comprehend until now. I guess I should have been narrating my reading!! 
But my next question is how do you keep up as the reading gets more and more advanced.
Mackfam wrote:
| Narration builds attention - by its very definition, one must pay close attention to one reading to be able to tell back. |
|
|
Mustn't one also pay close attention to the narrator? I will have to do a lot of reading to keep up
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
Mackfam
Board Moderator
Non Nobis
Joined: April 24 2006
Location: Alabama
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 14656
|
| Posted: Aug 04 2014 at 4:31pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
sunny wrote:
But my next question is how do you keep up as the reading gets more and more advanced.
Mackfam wrote:
| Narration builds attention - by its very definition, one must pay close attention to one reading to be able to tell back. |
|
|
Mustn't one also pay close attention to the narrator? I will have to do a lot of reading to keep up |
|
|
Oh yes! You've hit the nail on the head! Which is why you can't be multi-tasking through a narration unless it's a task like folding laundry - something that doesn't engage the mind. We have to model attentiveness! In fact, the Catechism (2223) tells us that in our primary role of educators, the home is the place to learn virtues and our children are to apprentice under us - which means it's our job to model it first.
I like to set up my narrators in their narration, so that means that *I* have to pay attention to their narration enough that tomorrow, I can review where we were in our reading/narrating based on yesterday's narration and then invite the next day's reading.
So, I might say something like, "Yesterday, we learned all about Perseus' winged sandals and helmet of invisibility. I'm so eager to see what he does with them in today's reading! Let's get started." I could not do that if I hadn't been attentive during the prior day's narration.
Now, as far as advanced reading - I do try to pre-read most books. I always pre-read books with mature content, or books that might have discussion points regarding our faith, like Ivanhoe. Another tool I use is skimming. Reading the chapter on skimming in Mortimer Adler's book, How to Read a Book (which is also required reading for my high school level students, by the way!) really helped me get the most out of that skill.
__________________
Jen Mackintosh
Wife to Rob, mom to dd 19, ds 16, ds 11, dd 8, and dd 3
Wildflowers and Marbles
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
Mackfam
Board Moderator
Non Nobis
Joined: April 24 2006
Location: Alabama
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 14656
|
| Posted: Aug 04 2014 at 4:34pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
sunny wrote:
| I guess I should have been narrating my reading!! |
|
|
I can't tell you how many times I've come to the same conclusion, Sunny! Especially meaty stuff....I think....ok, the only way I'm going to be able to wrap my head around this is to read it and narrate to myself one.paragraph.at.a.time! It does work!
__________________
Jen Mackintosh
Wife to Rob, mom to dd 19, ds 16, ds 11, dd 8, and dd 3
Wildflowers and Marbles
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
sunny
Forum Pro
Joined: Feb 10 2008
Location: Florida
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 205
|
| Posted: Aug 04 2014 at 6:36pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
OK, Jen, I'm on it!  I've got some ideas on ways to ease into this. Our school starts next week. I'll report back to ya. Thank you!
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
SallyT
Forum All-Star
Joined: Aug 08 2007
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 2489
|
| Posted: Aug 05 2014 at 9:52am | IP Logged
|
|
|
Re narrating your own reading --
The single best, most life-saving piece of counsel my husband received from his Ph.D thesis supervisor was: Every time you read something, write about it.
Basically, though of course he wasn't speaking CM language, he was saying, "Read and narrate! In writing!"
It was life-saving for a Ph.D student because it meant that when he went to write his dissertation, it was basically written. But it also meant that his research process involved making each text he read really *his* -- rendering it into his own language, letting what had been important about that text rise to the surface. Over time, this meant that he could look back and see certain themes emerge, within the larger theme that he'd already decided on when he made his research proposal.
I have given my high-school students this same counsel -- when you read something, write *something* about it. Narration helps them to process what they read, for all the reasons Jen enumerates, but having a written record of what you've read means that when you need to write a formal paper, odds are you've got it half-written already. You can look back and, often, see something potentially cohesive in what you've noticed about your readings in a particular subject.
This is all higher up and further in than what you'd do with a 10-year-old, but it is the direction in which the habit of narration tends. Ultimately, I think narration teaches -- FAR more than discussion questions do -- how to live as a reader and writer. It is the best habit of scholars and writers.
And that is my disquisition on narration for the day. :)
Sally
__________________
Castle in the Sea
Abandon Hopefully
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
Mackfam
Board Moderator
Non Nobis
Joined: April 24 2006
Location: Alabama
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 14656
|
| Posted: Aug 05 2014 at 10:09am | IP Logged
|
|
|
SallyT wrote:
| I have given my high-school students this same counsel -- when you read something, write *something* about it. Narration helps them to process what they read, for all the reasons Jen enumerates, but having a written record of what you've read means that when you need to write a formal paper, odds are you've got it half-written already. You can look back and, often, see something potentially cohesive in what you've noticed about your readings in a particular subject. |
|
|
I wanted to spring-board off this excellent point that Sally makes - and that is that people often wonder about formal essays and compositions in high school using the CM methods of language arts...and it all starts with the narration!
Age 6 - 10 - Oral narration teach all those things I wrote about earlier - organizing thoughts, interacting with the reading so that a reader truly knows it, and the thoughts become his own, reading for knowledge - not information.
Age 10 - 13/14 - Narrations transition into written form, which is to say, it's still the narration, the telling back of what the reader *knows*, but now it's in the written form. No pressure, no bullet points, no emphasis on structure - just the reader now writing what he knows. And now he's communicating in the written word.
Age 14 - 18 - Now is the time for any formal instruction in writing, but this process is so natural and organic because it springs right out of what Sally spoke of - the student is already accustomed to reading to know, and he's been acclimated to writing what he knows. Now, it's just the polish. His thoughts are all there. In offering more formal lessons in writing a specific form of essay, we could simply take all of the written narrations of a child, have the child read over and review written narrations and begin to easily outline points and flesh out others. Building an essay becomes a simple extension of the narration, which is to say, they tell back what they know, and now they're learning how to connect their thoughts and do so in a larger way which is more polished in structure. But that process isn't trespassing on an individual child's "voice." Nope. They've learned to develop and foster that voice through years of narrating.
Anyway, Sally's point about narrating after every reading (whether that's oral or written) and how that's lays out a seamless transition to more formal writing, is I think an aspect that is sometimes overlooked. Sometimes people see the Classical/CM methods of narration and writing and think, "Yikes - how am I going to teach my child to write using THAT??!!" And the answer is, you're NOT going to teach it (at least, not in the way you might be imagining now). Let the authors teach beautiful, expressive writing. Let the child narrate, and then, very naturally, they will write - the habit of communicating having been modeled by the best authors they have encountered and the habit of telling what they know having been lived out on a daily basis.
And...thus ends my own disquisition for the day!
All of it meant to be an encouragement to you, Sunny - to anyone reading and wondering if this is all it's cracked up to be!
__________________
Jen Mackintosh
Wife to Rob, mom to dd 19, ds 16, ds 11, dd 8, and dd 3
Wildflowers and Marbles
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
sunny
Forum Pro
Joined: Feb 10 2008
Location: Florida
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 205
|
| Posted: Aug 06 2014 at 5:06pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
I truly enjoyed the disquisitions! My next question is in regard to videos about narration, dictation, etc. that were discussed here some time ago. I tried a search but didn't come up with them. They were not Sonya Shafer on the SimplyCharlotte website. I think it was a 4real member? Any idea what I'm thinking of?
Thanks!
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
CrunchyMom
Forum Moderator
Joined: Sept 03 2007
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 6385
|
| Posted: Aug 06 2014 at 6:16pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
Eve Anderson dvds?
Eta:Link
__________________
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
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
sunny
Forum Pro
Joined: Feb 10 2008
Location: Florida
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 205
|
| Posted: Aug 06 2014 at 6:20pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
I dont think so, Lindsay. I was able to view the videos online. Maybe she posted on her blog?
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
JennGM
Forum Moderator
Joined: Feb 07 2005
Location: Virginia
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 17702
|
| Posted: Aug 06 2014 at 6:30pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
sunny wrote:
| I dont think so, Lindsay. I was able to view the videos online. Maybe she posted on her blog? |
|
|
I think you mean the Ambleside International Videos
__________________
Jennifer G. Miller
Wife to  & ds1  '03 & ds2  '07
Family in Feast and Feria
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
sunny
Forum Pro
Joined: Feb 10 2008
Location: Florida
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 205
|
| Posted: Aug 06 2014 at 6:33pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
She talked about each topic and then, with a child demonstrated what each "look like".
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
|
|
4Real Forums : Language Arts Come Alive
Topic: Mason Reading/Narration/ Comprehension
