Charlotte Mason called narration an art, something that is inherent in every person that needs not to be taught. But how can we help our child develop and hone their abilities to tell? We’ll be discussing this in today’s podcast as we look at composition in Form 1, grades 1 through 3.
Listen Now:
Charlotte Mason, Volume 6 (Amazon) (Living Book Press – use code DELECTABLE for 10% off!)
ADE Vol 6, Chapt 10 Reading List
Emily
Welcome to A Delectable Education, the podcast that spreads the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method. I’m Emily Kiser and I’m here with…
Liz
…Liz Cottrill…
Nicole
…and Nicole Williams.
Emily
Well, last week we talked about Charlotte Mason’s unique idea about Composition, that she didn’t believe in the formal teaching of Composition until the last few years of high school.
But that doesn’t mean that the children don’t learn Composition or have any growth or development in their abilities. In fact, the essential groundwork of Composition begins in Form 1. So Nicole, will you remind us what that looks like?
Nicole
Yeah. So the central tool is narration, like you said, after hearing a reading, whether from Bible, History, Literature, Geography, the child tells back in their own words. And these narrations are oral in the early years and they are the first exercise in Composition. They are gathering ideas, they’re ordering the things in their mind, and then they’re choosing words to express it clearly. So there’s a lot going on there.
Children in 3rd grade who have the ability to do so can even start making a single narration each week or narrating part of the narration and then–
Liz
Do you mean the writing?
Nicole
I’m sorry. Yes. So maybe they would start out and mom would give them just a few minutes to write and then she could say, okay, now tell me the rest.
Liz
Right.
Nicole
Yes. At the same time, several other subjects are building the skills they’re going to need later for this written work. So they have the Handwriting lesson to establish control and confidence with forming letters and then words. Then dictation begins very simply with first single letters and then whole words and that’s laying the foundation for accurate spelling.
And Grammar lessons aren’t formal at this stage, but children are unconsciously absorbing sentence structure and vocabulary and style from the beautiful language in their books. I’d say Recitation also plays an important role at this stage. Here the child studies a short passage and if they’re not readers yet, it might be just be that mom is reading it to them, a poem, a psalm, Bible story. And then when they speak it, they’re speaking with clear enunciation and expressions. They’re really getting to the heart of that author who wrote that beautiful language and, you know, taking that in. So they’re also with that developing an ear for the cadence of poetry, which is going to take something they’re going to need to know later. And they’re internalizing vocabulary through that syntax. So all of that is very important.
And then remember that Charlotte Mason, we keep saying she did not have any instruction, but she would warn against composition drills at this stage, forced exercises and sentence making or artificial story prompts. That would not be on the schedule.
So they really have the power of oral composition by the time they graduate and they may be starting into that written a little bit.
Emily
By the time they graduate the form.
Nicole
The form, yeah. Just that form, not the whole thing.
Emily
Hopefully they’ll be further along by the time they get to graduation.
Well, as far as the lesson format, narration, which is Form 1 Composition, as you’re saying, it’s not its own subject. So we don’t have a narration lesson. Some people think that, you know? But it is a part of whatever lesson requires a narration.
Nicole
Maybe because there are like notes of lessons where narration is the goal or something.
Emily
But you can clearly see it. It’ll even, like below that look at the subject and it tells you what subject that was in it.
So it’s not it’s own subject on the timetable, rather it is a part of virtually every other lesson. Charlotte Mason says, all their work lends itself to oral composition and the power of such composition is innate in children and is not the result of instruction. But children do need the right material in order to narrate and they need time, Charlotte Mason tells us. So we ought to, just in order to perfect the art of narrating.
So in Form 1B, those first year beginner students, B for beginner, Charlotte Mason tells us that we ought to read a short passage about a paragraph or so and stop and ask them to tell and then read another paragraph. And then they narrate that part. So they’re taking narration in smaller chunks. As they become accustomed to narration we’re going to extend the length of that passage even to a whole chapter by the time they’re in form 1A before we stop and have them narrate.
So we also have some important instruction from Charlotte Mason about our part in this. We do not make corrections to grammar or otherwise if they start with um and but and and then and then and then… Yeah, can you see we’ve had lots of small children? We don’t allow any interruptions. We don’t allow them to interrupt themselves and ask questions. We don’t allow other children to jump in and interrupt their narration. And likely those children who do have ideas, they know they will have a chance to tell.
Next, they could make a correction before they begin their narration. Or else I should say, we never allow a child to narrate what has already been narrated. But they could say, well, he said it was the queen and actually it was the king and then jump ahead to wherever they were picking up the narration. And then we can also, as teachers, if there’s not another child to correct or whatever, they made a grave error. No one has sinned, you know, and we can correct that in the discussion time after the narration is complete, but we don’t interrupt during the narration. We don’t stop readings to explain words, vocabulary, or really anything. And we instead are allowing the child to grapple with their understanding of the text and only answer questions that they ask, right? We have a lot of things that we might want to make sure they understand, but we’re only going to answer the questions that they ask us.
The recap that we’ve talked about in all these other subjects that we’ve discussed so far this season at the very beginning of the lesson before we even read the new material for the day, that’s like a little bit of a narration too. And it’s requiring them to go into longer term memory, usually a whole week basically is how the structure of lessons happens. And so they’re having to really recall and bring forward and just summarize in a very concise few words or sentences what we learned about last time.
And that’s another valuable skill in composition that they will put to use later. And when we ask for a narration at this stage, we don’t need carefully crafted prompts. But we are to ask them to tell about the character or the event that they just read about and then we leave it open for them to tell what they know and think important about the reading. Instead of asking a question like, tell me how such and such or okay, tell me how King Arthur was able to pull the sword out of the stone, right? Instead of saying something like that be like, tell me what you learned about King Arthur, right? It’s more open-ended. They can tell us any part of that that they knew.
Liz
Sometimes to help them put it in their own words. I just like to say now you tell this your way, you know, so that they realize they’re recreating it themselves
Emily
Yep, sometimes training does need to happen at this age of getting them to tell back from the beginning. And I know a lot of children struggle with this, they always want to tell you the last thing, but we do want to work on that consecutive–
Liz
Start at the beginning…
Emily
Start at the beginning. And so you have a thing that you often tell people…
Liz
Well, if a child persists in that problem I often, right before I read the next portion, will just say, now, listen carefully to what I’m going to say next, because this is where you will start your narration. You know, that just to help them for a little bit till they get the idea.
Emily
And of course, this is why we have the single reading, right? So that they pay full attention, because it takes all of our attention to learn how to narrate at this age.
Liz
And did you say that every lesson with a book must be narrated?
Emily
And actually I would say that there is narration of other kinds of lessons too, with oral lessons…
Liz
I think my point is that they don’t learn to narrate by doing it now and then, you know, every time I read to them they have to narrate. That’s how they learn.
Emily
And even Charlotte Mason is famous for quoting this and she didn’t know where she got it, but she’s quoting somebody and so we know the citation, but “the mind can know nothing except the answer to a question put by itself.” So the mind has to ask a question and usually the question in narration is what’s next?
But so that means you know when we have a math thing and they’re having to explain the process that they…or how did you come up with that answer? So that is a kind of narration as well. So virtually every lesson in Form 1 is a narration lesson.
Nicole
I even have quotes from Nature Study where they said every Nature Study walk should be narrated.
Emily
Yes, yes, exactly, and that’s part of the Nature Notebook, right? We’re narrating our walks that we took.
So the objective for Composition or narration at this level are to give a child a chance to tell what they know, to increase their powers of attention and imagination. Because they have to pay full attention to the passage that’s being read and that visualizing of the scene is fueling their imagination, it’s helping their imagination expand. And then they have to recall what they saw in their mind’s eye in order to narrate and tell back, right?
So through narration, children are absorbing vocabulary and syntax, and they’re effortlessly integrating this into their narrations. It’s quite delightful to hear huge words thrown in there or just like that little turn of phrase that you know, they just delighted to hear it because it’s coming back. They’re not merely parroting, but it’s more of a it’s more like being a connoisseur, right? They’re sampling, they’re tasting and they’re adopting what gives them pleasure and answers the needs that they have to tell.
So our teacher prep in narration is, other than selecting excellent books for their lessons, we don’t really have any specific prep. We don’t have to come up with narration prompts. Our part is to hold our tongues and to allow the kids to narrate and do the work of their own education.
Liz
And I think narration is valuable to the teacher, not because they’re going to tell you all the things that you think they should know or have gotten out of the passage, but you are definitely going to find out straight from their own lips what is on their mind and the ideas that they received in that passage that was read. It is a big mistake to hurry a child in this process. I mean, it takes most young children at least a year to become adept at narrating. Once they are, they love it. And some of them love it from day one.
Emily
And you don’t mean like to learn to do it at all?
Liz
No, they’re learning the whole time, but it’s going to just continue to improve and improve. At first they may say one little thing and just let them, you know, they’re, they’re putting their toe in the water, so to speak, but give them an opportunity to tell and they’re going to tell.
It’s also a mistake to read too small of a passage. Some people hear, just a short portion. But if you only read them one sentence, what option do they have other than to repeat it back and be a little parrot? On the other hand, if you read two or three or five pages or 20 minutes straight, it’s way too much and it overwhelms them. It’s kind of like feeding a nine month old a 20 ounce steak. It’s going to be disappointing.
There is no set length for the way you should break down books either. Different books have different difficulty levels for narrating. Some are really easy to narrate. They go down like applesauce, I like to say. Others are full of dense materials, so it’s going to be a little more challenging and so some of those kind of books you’re always going to be stopping frequently during the lesson time for multiple narrations.
Emily
We should also talk, have Nicole tell us, you hear a common objection about a certain kind of book that students are always assigned in form one for a nature lore and how they think their kids aren’t understanding it or it’s irrelevant or they don’t like it because they can’t narrate it.
Nicole
Just that science in general is harder to know for one thing because there are lots of facts and details in there and sometimes the order is not helpful with that. But another thing that I’ve noticed with the children who in these early science nature lore books is that there’s so much in their head and they haven’t really gotten it out yet. They can’t…I think it has more to do with the fact that they get stuck on something, like because they’re excited about that thing, not that that’s the only thing they can remember. It’s just that this is what’s piquing their interest at the time. And then later you hear them talking about it and here and there, little bits coming out later.
Emily
And you always say it’s okay if they don’t tell chronologically through the passage that you read, right? Because especially if it doesn’t have a narrative.
Nicole
Exactly. So just throwing out little facts and details sometimes is the thing they need to do with regards to…And those early nature and lore books are science .
Liz
And I think that’s the value of taking those couple minutes at the end of the lesson. I always call it the “tell me more” part, you know, So you did a wonderful job of describing that butterfly. Tell me more about where he went, what he ate…and you know, whatever it is that they didn’t put in because they usually know all about that too. They just couldn’t get it out like you said, right?
I think there’s a lot of wisdom in Charlotte Mason’s hands off. Like Emily said, don’t talk. This is their time to talk. And I think every writer knows that the hardest part of writing is thinking about what to say and ordering things appropriately for the reader. And the children are just beginning to learn that whole process. They’re being given a lot of good fertilizing ideas through their reading, and narration is giving them the skills that they need that they’re going to need later when they’re writing for themselves.
And I think that words strengthen a child to have confidence in taking in intellectual material, like you said, things they’ve never been presented with before. And really it’s kind that she waits until their handwriting skills have caught up to their verbal skills before they’re asked to literally write an essay or something.
Emily
It is in the earliest forms that we see how Miss Mason did not underestimate the intelligence of children. Rather, she gave them the opportunity to use their powers of narration on material perfectly suited for them. Next week, we’re turning our attention to upper elementary Composition lessons and see how the child’s skills progress. We hope you’ll join us as we continue to spread the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method.