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Little Bears
12 September 2008
Narration
The current Charlotte Mason blog carnival theme is that of narration.
When I was at school, this was normally called "Comprehension", and usually involved telling back, in your own words (very important, and very difficult for a child to understand, sometimes, I think) your understanding of a story or non-fiction subject you've been told about by the teacher, or that you've read on your own. Comprehension can also consist of answers to set questions on the passage or subject - in essense, 'Comprehension' shows that a child 'comprehends' the story or subject.
Narration is one of the foundational instruments of a Charlotte Mason education, and unlike school comprehension, usually involves an oral retelling rather than a written one - at least in the early years, and unlike comprehension, narration does not usually use questions, except as a prompt in the case of a child who finds narration particularly difficult.
My understanding is that Charlotte Mason actually required a short narration on every piece of writing a child reads or has read to them.
Unfortunately, this is an area we have really, really struggled with, and cannot claim any degree of success!
However, re-reading Charlotte Mason principles, I realise that narration is such an important part of learning - a passage that a child narrates is much more easily and fully retained than a passage that wasn't narrated, that reading and listening without narration is almost totally wasted!
So I am determined to try to start this again. My trouble is that my oldest child is now almost 13, so I don't quite know how to encourage him to start doing something that he has for so long been reluctant to do. I think, with him (at least in the first instance) I will need to use questions to prompt him into telling what he knows and remembers, rather than expecting him to just narrate 'cold'.
I have 3 boys and one girl, and despite not wanting to impose or encourage cultural gender prejudices, I have found that the girl is much more keen on all the things one might expect a girl to be keen on, and narration is no exception. My daughter seems to be much more willing to tell me what she knows than any of the boys. None of my children write 'independently'. The 12yo who can chooses not to, and will need a lot of coaxing to improve that situation. For the 8yo I tend to write down her narrations, and she will occassionally trace over my writing. She just isn't a proficient enough writer yet to write for herself and would get frustrated that she can't get on to paper what is in her mind (which I think may have been my older boy's problem, at the root of his reluctance to write).
I haven't done any narration yet with the 6 and 5 year-old, so that will be another thing I'll be trying to start when we get back into our routine next week. What I might do is to start with the youngest, and ask each older child to add something to the younger children's re-telling.
I don't think I will require narration for everything - we'll just have to see how we go. Perhaps we'll just start with our main read-aloud which we'll be doing once a day. I'll let you know how it goes!
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