CHARLOTTE MASON FUNDAMENTALS: NARRATION





A quick compendium: 

What is narration, and what does it accomplish? 

A nuts-and-bolts how-to guide

A helpful overview of narration from the very beginning through high school. (Note: I too raised a professional writer without a formal composition program, so everything she says here gets a yes from me).

Karen Glass, author of Know and Tell: The Art of Narration, offers some thoughts regarding this art. 

Meanwhile, my own thoughts about narration, what it is not and is: 

 Tempted though we may be, narration is NOT a reading-comprehension quiz, or a test to see how much of the reading the child "got."

It is not primarily a performance on the part of the child.

Though it seems simple, it is not easy.

It IS a natural thought process, which it is our job to encourage in our children. In other words, this is what good readers do, often silently and without even realizing that they do it. We foreground it in our children's education

a) because, requiring focused, full attention to a reading, it's an effective process for retention

and

b) to encourage it as a consistent habit, so that anything the child reads – not just the things he's naturally interested in – have a chance to take hold in his mind.

It IS focused on connection over information. You know what you connect with on some complex emotional, intellectual, intuitive level. That's the knowledge that remains with you, as opposed to the information you crammed in for a test and then promptly forgot. Bear in mind that no one person can possibly know everything. I have a medievalist daughter who can't remember dates, which has not stopped her from pursuing graduate study in history. Don't worry about information, especially in a subject like history, which you'll be immersed in for your child's entire education. Honor what the child connects with in a reading, and be at peace with whatever that is.

It IS a lot harder than you think it is to do. It is HARD, especially for a beginner, to focus with full attention on a reading and then articulate what that reading has left in his mind. I always encourage parents to take their turn at narrating, partly to model what retelling can look like, but mostly to see that although it's simple, narration is actually very hard work.

Things that help: 

 Start simple. For young children (6 or 7, not younger), Aesop's Fables make a great first-narration text. Some people recommend JUST narrating Aesop at first. I like to begin by asking for narrations in everything, but the length of a fable is about right to start out, whether you're reading history or geography or science or religion. Don't worry about getting behind in that subject: the real lesson here is how to narrate that subject, not the information contained in the readings. As narration becomes a steady habit, you can increase the length of the readings.

With multiple children in a form all narrating the same selection read aloud, I've done various things:

Read a fable-length section of the reading, and call on one child to narrate. Then read another section of the same length, and call on another. OR sometimes, call on the same child, so that nobody goes to sleep once their turn is over.

Read the whole reading and call on one child to narrate, then the other child to fill in what he/she connected with that the other one didn't include. Again, with multiple children in a form or class, you have to be sure your pattern of calling on people isn't too consistent or predictable, because they'll tend to know when it's not their turn and tune out.

More about reading and narrating with multiple children and a wide age range

Narration prompts:

 Remember that narration is not a reading-comprehension test. You can assume that the child has probably understood more than he can articulate, especially at the beginning. If he does consistently seem truly baffled by the reading, the book may be too difficult for his level, OR (more likely) the selection too long and overwhelming. Before I changed the book, I would try reducing the amount read, and upping my preparation game a little (more on prepared lessons).

The standing prompt in my house was always something like, "Tell me about what we just read." Or, "Imagine that you want Grammy to know this story. How would you tell it to her?"

But – and this is helpful especially when you have the kind of wiseacre who says, "Why should I tell you? You just read it to me. you know what it's about" – you might also ask things like

"What did you think about X?"

"Can you act out what just happened with lego minifigs/stuffed animals/puppets/etc?"

"Tell me three things you noticed in this reading."

"Draw me the cartoon version of what we just read."

More narration ideas, including prompts for written narration for older students. 

It is important to take narration time into account when planning the length of a lesson – if you're going to ask for a cartoon, cut the reading time to give the child time to do that, without exceeding the time limit for your short lesson.

One paradigm that I think helps in envisioning narration, and in being comfortable with it as a fundamental process in your education, is that of the monastic practice of Lectio Divina. 

 Here, longtime Catholic Charlotte Mason educators Steve and Marcia Mattern discuss the integration of Charlotte Mason's methods with their Catholic Faith. 

Almost immediately, they mention the ancient Benedictine practice of Lectio Divina, in which the reader of sacred scripture attends carefully to a short reading, then meditates on what the Holy Spirit has prompted him to notice in that reading. In other words, in this method, he is not thinking either about the "main idea" of the reading, in order to summarize it, or about the "information" in the reading (who-what-where). He is opening himself to enter into the reading and to be attentive to words and phrases and ideas that speak to him in this reading. It's a practice which, especially over time, deepens his intimacy with the inspired Word of God, and through that, with God Himself.

(If you've never done Lectio Divina, the Hallow app is a great place to start, with Lectio Divina meditations on the daily Gospel reading).

This is an approach that's fruitful for all reading, not only sacred reading. The Holy Spirit doesn't cease to be present when you close the Bible! And asking for His guidance at the start of your school day, including asking Him to open hearts and minds as you read together, is a terrific practice.


Oral vs. Written Narration

 Typically oral narration is the gold standard, something the student will do throughout his education. But you can begin to introduce written narration when oral narration is a solid and fairly sophisticated habit, usually around age ten.

I look on written narration as the generation of raw material for more finished writing (in addition to its general function as a process of attention and assimilation). In other words, I don't grade it as I would polished writing, correcting or counting off for spelling or grammatical mistakes. Dictation is where I work on those skill sets with my students. In written narration, I assume that the child is thinking in writing, working out thoughts, which is an all-consuming process, and an important one. Even professional writers have editors for a reason: there are only so many balls you can keep in the air when you're juggling ideas and trying to render them into written language. It's unrealistic to expect a middle-schooler to sit down and produce a perfect piece of writing off the top of his head, as he's trying to sort out his thoughts. For that matter, it's unrealistic to expect an adult who writes for a living to do that. 

How I do deal with written narration: 

 Pretty much the same way I do oral narration.

That is, if the narration is kind of thin, I write back to the student with more questions. What about this? Did you consider that?

I spell out the level of detail I would like to see. Sometimes, for a high-schooler narrating a lengthy, detail-dense reading, I will specify a number of details per page ("Stop and narrate at the end of the page, and tell me three things." Often I will let narrations like this be more like notes, with bullet points).

I will often assign a minimum word limit, again, especially for high-school students: "Write 100 words about any aspect of this reading that stands out to you."

Then, periodically, I will assign a more finished essay based on these narrations, with some kind of essay prompt that encourages the student to shape the writing beyond merely retelling (cause-and-effect, compare-contrast, exposition of an idea, etc). Then, the student will write at least two drafts, and in the last round before turning in the finished paper, clean up spelling, punctuation, and so on. But I never worry about those surface things in a narration.