When you hear that Charlotte Mason doesn’t begin formal lessons in grammar until Form 2, do you think she’s crazy? Or at least wonder why? A young Ms. Mason would’ve agreed with you, but after working with real children, she changed her mind. On today’s podcast, we’re discussing Grammar lessons in the Charlotte Mason method. Join us and find out more.

Listen Now:

Charlotte Mason, Volume 6 (Amazon) (Living Book Press – use code DELECTABLE for 10% off!)

ADE Vol 6, Chapt 10 Reading List

ADE’s Form 2 Grammar Lessons Guide by Mason (updated by Liz Cottrill)

ADE’s Grammar Lessons: A Short Grammar of the English Tongue by Meiklejohn (updated by Jessica Becker)

ADE’s Poetry Scansion Lessons by Jono Kiser

Episode 237: Writing: Grammar and Composition

ADE on YouTube

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…

Nicole
…Nicole Williams…

Liz
…and Liz Cottrill.

Emily
Charlotte Mason said that we have nothing new in the teaching of Grammar to suggest. But for those of us who are used to Language Arts curriculum and workbooks beginning in kindergarten, the Language Arts progression does seem quite different, not only compared with our own education, but also compared to what all the voices in the homeschool community seem to be saying, right?

Nicole
Mm-hmm. 

Emily
Nicole, can you paint the picture for us of how Grammar fits into the whole scope of a child’s education?

Nicole
Absolutely. So in Form 1, so that’s grades one through three, there are no formal Grammar lessons. 

Emily
Right. 

Nicole
And instead, students are absorbing language naturally through rich reading or being read to, and narration. That was very intentional. 

Charlotte Mason tells us Grammar is a logical study. It’s abstract, and it’s, she said, “Uncongenial to young minds who deal best with the concrete.” So at this stage, they read living books, they narrate, they copy passages, they learn poetry, they absorb correct usage while reading and even speaking, like we talked about in our last episode. They’re forming habits of speech and thought, but they’re not studying parts of speech, or analyzing, or parsing, or anything like that. 

But then in Form 2, so that’s grades four through six, this is where the formal Grammar begins. And it begins with sentences, not parts of speech. Charlotte Mason made it very clear. She said, “It’s better that the child should begin with the sentence, not with the parts of speech, that he should learn a little of analysis before he learns to parse.” So at this idea, the first ideas that are presented to them are that words go together to make sense.

Emily
Yeah. 

Nicole
And they kind of learn that, and then we teach them that a sentence has two parts, that which we speak of and what we say about it. So we’re going to start slow on top of all of that. Then we’ll move to dividing it into subject and predicates, understanding those words. Verbs are introduced, being verbs, and doing words. Exercises that involve prefixes, use of words in multiple grammatical ways, and so we’re still seeing that it’s kind of analysis before parsing. We’re not doing that. 

Liz
And it’s all sentence work.

Nicole
Yes. So by the age of 12, we see sections in her volumes that say, “By 12, they should know,” and she said, “They should have a fair knowledge of English grammar,” just through these basic things. 

Then in Forms 3 and 4, so this is seventh, eighth, and ninth grade, Grammar continues. But now they’re going to parse more complex sentences, they’re going to analyze poetry, they’re going to work with prefixes and word structure. At this stage, Charlotte Mason said that Grammar functions as one of the disciplinary subjects alongside Math and those kinds of logical subjects. In Volume Three, she says, “Mathematics, grammar, logic, leave the record of intellectual habits in the brain tissue.” So it kind of reminds you why we’re doing this and what kind of lessons these are. 

So I would also say that at this point, it’s starting to support composition and translation, which we’re going to talk about in another episode. 

And then in Form 5 and 6, so those are your grades 10, 11, and 12, it’s really integrated in the advanced language of studying and writing. At this level, they’re writing papers, they’re translating other languages back and forth from English to that and back again. They’re really reading deeply in both their English language and their foreign language, and the grammar – and even Latin – and the grammar is really helping them with all of that. So it really undergirds everything at this point and isn’t an isolated subject there. 

So yeah. That’s the big picture. So she’s putting it off, but she’s taking it very seriously.

And we see that in how she presents it to the children over those years. 

Emily
Charlotte Mason also says in Home Education that Grammar, being a study of words and not of things, and that children can’t dream parts of speech, is by no means attractive to the child.

Nicole
No. 

Emily
And nor should he be hurried into it. And just like you said, that’s why we don’t see Grammar lessons starting in Form 1, and it’s one of those areas we have come to really trust what she says. We’ve seen it play out in our own children. And actually, I have to tell you, my own students who have begun the study of grammar, that is their favorite subject of the week, which can any of us say that?

Nicole
Right. 

Emily
My husband, maybe. 

So weekly in Form 2, there are two very short, 15-minute lessons a week for the study of Grammar. So they’re just slowly working through…it’s a little bite. And what you said about the logic. They’re always seeing words in sentences, which English needs to be…it’s where we put words in the sentence that depend upon its meaning, right? Our words don’t change like in Latin to give that meaning. And so they’re having to deduce always what they’re saying. 

In Form 3, they have, again, twice a week, but these lessons are longer. They’re 30 minutes this time. So they’re actually getting quite a bit of time to work out even more detailed analysis and using their logical reasoning skills.

Form 4 cuts back to just once a week for 30 minutes. By now, they have got five years of Grammar under their belt. Grammar is a finite study. 

Nicole
Right. 

Emily
We use it all the time, but there’s only so much we need to know about it, so they cut it back a little bit. And then Form 5 and 6, we don’t see a subject called English Grammar on their schedules. Instead, it is English Language, and grammar is wrapped up into a lot of other things, such as word study, like learning the etymology of words, and also some reading and writing instruction. So it becomes part of that subject. So like you said, it’s all integrated and interwoven. And they do have two 30-minute lessons a week for that subject. 

So as far as the individual lessons go, there’s really not a single format that a lesson has to take, but there are some common ideas. So the new idea is presented orally. Grammar is primarily an oral lesson. There’s practice, just like we do in Math, where they get to actually bring their powers of reasoning to exercises in looking at different sentences.

Liz
And by that, what you’re saying is the teacher instructs a little more than in most subjects.

Emily
Correct in Charlotte Mason we don’t have a book that’s doing the teaching at this point.

Liz
She’s explaining.

Emily
Yep. And then you can actually see some really good sample lessons in Volume One on pages 296 to 300. Charlotte Mason lays out a couple of different lessons herself. So the child then is introduced to the topic, gets to play around with it, work through it, and then he applies his new knowledge by creating sentences himself that use that part of speech, and he’s coming up with.

So it’s really taking his knowledge and owning it, I think.

So as he progresses, he identifies the grammar concepts that are in his actual school book. Whatever grammar idea he’s working on in his lessons, he’s looking in his actual school books for those. So it’s not a removed, isolated, compartmentalized subject, but is integrated into the very books that he’s reading and narrating and writing from. So you can see just this beautiful cohesion of this subject. 

Nicole
Even just the fact that a lot of times we worry about changing to written narration, and we talk about how that transition happens, but the importance of when they’re older, still maintaining that oral narration and that they are using, how do I say this?

Emily
Different sentence structures. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

So he analyzes example sentences, and he works through the logic of what each word’s place is in that sentence, expanding and kind of adding to the knowledge that he’s gained. 

Also in Form 3, they do a formal study of Scansion, which is the grammar of poetry, which is different. It’s the rhythm and meter and breaking words into syllables and foot patterns and rhyme schemes. So that is another facet of Grammar that happens.

Liz
In Form 3. 

Emily
In Form 3 and up, mm-hmm. Yes. 

So our objectives for our Grammar lessons are to increase their reasoning powers and their logic. Primarily, it’s not just to become better English speakers, right? It’s really honing their ability to reason. And then, of course, we do want to increase their knowledge of English grammar at the same time. 

So our teacher prep for Grammar lessons is really just to look over the next lesson and wrap our minds around it. Maybe you’re like me and never had formal Grammar instruction and you’re really fuzzy on what participles are. Or whatever it is. So make sure you understand, since this is an oral lesson, that you’re presenting the idea. Thankfully, we do have some resources to recommend I’ll tell you about in a minute. 

But another part of our prep is maybe they need more practice on a thing, so we’re looking over their school books that they’re using and just choosing out a couple of passages that they may need to work from.

So we at ADE have two of the resources that Charlotte Mason used, but we’ve updated them and included answer keys, which is, I think, essential for those of us who did not have study. So Liz herself redid Charlotte Mason’s own First Grammar Lessons, and that is our Form 2 Grammar Resource that we sell on the website, and you can find a link for that in the show notes.

And then once that is finished, completed, and the child has had lots of practice identifying those parts of speech in their school books as well, and writing their own sentences, then they can move on to “The Short Grammar of the English Tongue” by Meiklejohn, and we have two years of that resource. Which may take your child more than two years to complete because, of course, Grammar is one of those studies that Charlotte Mason said there must be no gaps in the child’s knowledge. We have to move at their own pace of understanding, and that is perfectly fine. 

And then my husband, Jono, actually, has written us a Scansion manual for those of us who’ve never studied, let alone English Grammar, the grammar of poetry, and he has done additional exercises as well once your students have worked through that. So if you are lost completely on the word “scansion”, we have some– 

Nicole
What’s that word even mean?

Emily
Yeah. Yeah. We have resources for you as well. 

So Mom, do you want to tell us some common questions that you hear, or just considerations we need to make and think about as we place our children in Grammar lessons?

Liz
Yeah. I think some of us get a bit into a cold sweat, just like teaching Math. And probably the most common thing I hear is that I never learned it myself. And I just am here to tell you that when I was going through school, millennia ago, they were in a phase where Grammar was not taught at all. I knew what a sentence was, and I might have known a noun and a verb, but I knew no particularities at all. And when I had to do my college entrance tests, I think I did the ACT, when my scores came back, I almost had a perfect score in Grammar, which just floored me. But my counselor, she’s like, “Well, that’s not surprising. You know how to read.” So I really encourage you that if you’re a reader, this will make sense to you. It’s just putting names to things. 

Emily
Much like in nature study, right? They’re familiar. 

Liz
I was just going to say that.

Emily
Oh, you were going to say the same thing. 

Liz
Yeah. That’s fine. You go ahead.

Emily
Just like we are familiar with by watching and looking at plants and animals. 

Liz
Right. 

Emily
And then later, we just gently introduce them to, Oh, that’s a stamen, and that’s a pistil, or the inflorescence or whatever. 

Liz
So naming comes after experiencing things and knowing about them. And your child has had amazing grammar since childhood. And when you think about how much it takes to learn a language, to realize that from babyhood to, say, kindergarten, their grammar has improved tremendously over that time, and it’s just from using it. So there’s such a practical thing about grammar. We all know the right way things are. Maybe we get stuck sometimes and say things incorrectly, but we know it isn’t right. 

So anyway, and that is another common thing moms just say, “I don’t understand it. It makes no sense to me.” I just want to encourage you that if you start with your fourth grader, and even if you have an older child, but they’ve not had grammar, you just start at the beginning, just like with Math and several other subjects. You’ll learn right alongside of them, and you will be having many aha moments. It will make much more sense.

A lot of moms are scared if their children ask them complicated questions that they don’t know the answer to because they’re not adept. And I’ll just say, in this day and age of instant answers, it’s not hard to Google and find out. But there are the handbooks for English Grammar, and they’re really helpful. 

Emily
And also, experts don’t always agree, right? 

Liz
Well, that is a-

Emily
There is sometimes not just one right answer in Grammar, and a child can make a case for a logical reason why this word is such a thing, and they can be right. 

Liz
And like so many other things in life, some terms have changed. You might have called this a clause, and now they call it, I’m making this up, but they might call it a different name, like section or something. The names for adverbs and certain types of parts of speech have changed a bit. So yeah, it’s a living subject because our language changes too.

Moms often have the question, if their child isn’t reading yet, should they begin Grammar? And I usually do recommend holding off if they’re not reading at all. You could do some oral lessons and begin to give them the ideas of what a complete sentence is and how to even detect the subject and the verb in a sentence without them being able to read, but you will have to do it with them, which isn’t too hard in Form 2 because the lessons are short, and there’s just a couple every week. But you might delay until the child has more confidence at reading. And then some children, because they’re slower to get to read, they write slower, and they can’t always write all their exercises. It is fine for them to tell those to you.

Emily
Absolutely. 

Liz
I had a son with learning disabilities, and he got through all of Charlotte Mason’s early grammar lessons, all four parts, and never wrote one sentence because he couldn’t do it. 

Anyway, if you guys can think of some others, that’d be great. I just want to encourage you that with all the living books they’ve read, as Nicole pointed out, they are hearing beautiful grammar usage, and it will come out. It has come out in their narrations. It’ll come out in their writing, and they will understand it. And honestly, there’s no need to panic about all the parts of speech being nailed down because really, at the end of Form 2, she just wanted them to know subject, verb, and object of a sentence. 

And like Emily said, looking in sentences in books can help. And just the principles that she gives you of saying to yourself, What is this sentence about? And then, What are we saying about it? will help you through even some complicated sentences in their history or their novel or something.

Emily
I think one thing that we hear, or the one common concern or query that we get all the time is, Can I combine my kids in this subject? And we would say, just like Math, Grammar, because there needs to be no gaps for the most part, unless you have two children who are in the same grade level and have the same understanding, you’re going to need to probably do these individually. 

Liz
And they might be in the same book. One’s just beginning, and the other one’s a ways through it, and they could have their lesson at the same time because the older student by then is probably able to do most of their lessons on their own.

Emily
We hope you’ve gained more clarity on Charlotte Mason grammar lessons after today’s discussion. Next week, we’ll be talking about learning languages apart from our mother tongue. In the meantime, please check out the show notes for links to the resources that we mentioned in this episode, including our previous episode on Grammar, number 237. We hope you’ll join us next week as we continue to spread the feast of the Charlotte Mason method.

Learning languages, both our own and other tongues, is a significant portion of a Charlotte Mason education. More time is given to their study than any other subject on Ms. Mason’s timetables. In today’s podcast, we look at the foundational principles of language acquisition to lay the groundwork for learning to speak and write in any language.

Listen Now:

Charlotte Mason, Volume 6 (Amazon) (Living Book Press – use code DELECTABLE for 10% off!)

ADE Vol 6, Chapt 10 Reading List

Thirty Million Words by Dana Suskind

The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker

Episode 44: Language Acquisition

ADE on YouTube

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…

Nicole
…Nicole Williams…

Liz
…and Liz Cottrill.

Emily
Charlotte Mason had a very distinctive method for teaching language, both our English tongue as well as foreign languages, both modern and ancient. It is this part of her curriculum that usually causes the most trepidation in parents and teachers because it looks so different from what we ourselves have experienced. Yet despite a gentle start in the first form, which is grades 1-3, if we steadily present each component as Ms. Mason laid out, we will be amazed at the command our students have of language. 

So today, Liz will be sharing the foundational ideas underlying this subject. 

Liz
Yes. We are going to begin to explore this area of the feast called language, namely English Grammar, the study of foreign languages, and the study of Latin. But before we dive into those individually in subsequent episodes, we want to talk about her particular method of teaching there. It’s important here to think about our relationship to language, how we gain confidence in any language. 

Language is part of what makes us unique as persons. Without it, we would be unable to thrive or function. Language, by definition, is the process or method of human communication, words used in a structured, commonly understood way by groups of people in a community or a country. So to consider the whole world with its eight billion people, and think about the fact that there are over 7,000 spoken languages among them. There are a lot of languages out there. We can get lost in other places and not understand a thing. But within each group, those members understand one another.

Most of us know only our mother tongue. Some of us maybe one other language, or a little bit of a couple of others. Americans, in general, because of our geographic location, separated by two big oceans, are pretty isolated, and we tend to only use English, and we get along just fine. But Ms. Mason included the study of English, of course, naturally, but the study of other languages was included in her feast as well. She believed learning other languages put us in sympathy with our neighbors in the world who don’t share our history and our customs. So the wide feast means widening our view of the world and the people in it who are like us with a difference. 

Since English is what most of us have in common – I’m speaking in English right now, this minute, and you’re understanding me because you know that language. We’re communicating. So let’s consider the process by which we gain this language. The average adult knows between 20,000 and 30,000 words, and obviously it takes some time to acquire that number of words. This also shows us, when you think about it, how many combinations of all those words that we can invent. 

How does a newborn baby become the adult who can comprehend and make sense and use those words? In the world of linguists and language specialists, the official term is called language acquisition. Ms. Mason understood this progression. She said the sense that is most needed to learn language is the ear. So before speaking a language, babies must hear it spoken. Beginning in utero and throughout infancy, they are receiving language spoken by others. An intriguing book about this is “Thirty Million Words” by Dana Suskind. And another really fascinating classic I read a couple of years ago is called “The Language Instinct” by Steven Pinker. 

Whatever language a baby hears from birth is the one that he learns. All babies begin to make sounds in their first year, but soon their mouth becomes adept at replicating and pronounce all the phonemes of the one language that they hear. From the ear, it goes to the mouth. They make more and more attempts to imitate what they’re hearing. Say words at first for objects and actions, and then babies are incredible linguists. Before long, words become sentences, and it’s incredible how their grammar is so well-formed right from the very beginning. It is instinctive to all of us. That’s what Pinker’s book goes a lot into. It’s really fun reading, but I like that kind of thing. 

Emily
And sometimes it’s been more logical than our actual grammar.

Liz
Oh, yes. When they put all those patterns. What was the good one of your kids that they used to say?

Emily
Two of my four children have, of their own, they’ve never heard this. Obviously, we don’t say, “I amn’t,” but they say, “I amn’t” instead of, “I’m not.” And it was just crazy. Because we say, you aren’t. 

Liz
Well, yeah, we say “we aren’t”. 

Emily
We usually contract the “o” in “not”, right? In I amn’t instead of I’m… 

Liz
I always love that. Why do grandchildren have to grow up?

Anyway, it’s not long before all those words become sentences, as I said. And then there comes a time when their mouths just flood us with their sentences. And one of the reasons young children ask why? so often, Charlotte Mason said, is they’re trying to gain some vocabulary. They have thoughts to express, and they’re figuring out all the ways that can be done by listening to us describe and explain things as we respond to their questions. They become very conversational. 

This seems really basic information to all of us. It’s our experience, but there is a pattern and a progression and a definite stage that language development happens. After speaking comes reading. And interestingly, most children begin acquiring this skill between ages five and nine, the early years of school when it begins. And because by that time, they have become quite proficient at verbal communication and begin learning the symbolic code that communicates meaning from a page of print. Reading takes several years for them to become comfortable with it.

But written language is the last phase. Just as hearing precedes speaking, reading precedes writing. Like those first babblings, once children understand that print tells you something, they start scribbling and pretending to write, or at least show interest in writing. Writing also, like reading, takes many years. And first, as with reading, they begin with learning how to form the letters, then they move to making words, and then sentences. 

Charlotte Mason’s scope and sequence in language follows the child’s natural development. They learn how to write the mechanics in Form 1, but putting original thoughts on paper doesn’t begin formally until Form 2 or fourth grade. That’s when they begin learning about the structure of language. We call it Grammar, and that’s what we’re going to discuss next week.

Emily
Thank you for joining our discussion today. You may like to go back and listen to our earlier episodes on language, particularly episode 44. You can find links to that episode in the show notes.

As we continue to discuss a Charlotte Mason curriculum this season, we invite you to read along with us in chapter 10 of Volume 6. Next week, we will be looking at the subject of English Grammar, discussing the particulars of these lessons and considerations Charlotte Mason made that apply to the study of your native tongue. We hope you’ll join us as we continue to spread the feast of the Charlotte Mason method.

How do I help my older students develop their composition abilities if they’ve not been narrating from the beginning? How can I keep up with all the many narrations my children need to tell and write each day? How do I know that they’re getting the facts right in their narrations? We’re addressing these questions and more as we wrap up our Composition series on the podcast today.

Listen Now:

Charlotte Mason, Volume 6 (Amazon) (Living Book Press – use code DELECTABLE for 10% off!)

ADE Vol 6, Chapt 10 Reading List

ADE Composition Planner

ADE Exam Planner

ADE Teacher Resource: A Point or Two of Correction and Critique

ADE on YouTube

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
So as we close out our series on Composition, we want to take some time to answer some common practical questions that often arise. So Nicole, why don’t you start us off? 

Nicole
Sure. So one of the first ones is where we can combine our students, and with Composition…I mean, obviously anywhere where the children are sharing the same source material. So we talked in our last series of lessons about how so many of your children, well so many, depends on how many children you have, but such a wide form level range of children are reading Plutarch together. So if they’re reading the same book, Shakespeare play…

Emily
History. 

Nicole
History, yeah. Then you can tailor their narration, whether it’s a written or an oral one, so that the child, each child, is working at their own level. So that would be one way to do it. So here’s some examples I came up with. After a scene from Midsummer Night’s Dream, say, your Form 2 student might give you an oral or written narration, while your Form 3 student might write a short summary of the same piece. 

After reading Plutarch– I should just preface that some of these are just better done together as a group, but sometimes we might want to do this kind of thing– you might have, again, your Form 2 student recount a single incident or something. Maybe that’s going to be their written narration for the day. Your Form 4 student might create a diary entry from the main character. So just kind of mixing it up there. 

Working from a current events article…lots of us listen or watch current events together as a family. Your Form 3 student could write a descriptive paragraph in prose, while the Form 5 student maybe could craft an opinion piece for the paper on the same topic. 

Emily
Or write a ballad. 

Nicole
Or write a ballad. 

So my last one was just if everybody was on the same nature walk, then maybe everybody could write about like a frozen pond or the first wildflower of the season. But your Form 1 student might say it orally and your Form 2 student might write in verse in the meter of that term’s poet and your Form 6 student might compose 20 lines of blank verse. So everybody can kind of do their own things at their level is what I’m saying. 

Liz
From the same source. 

Nicole
From the same source, right. 

Liz
Have you ever thought about, too, if they’re doing a lesson together, two children are studying the same Ancient History text. While you’re working with the younger children, they can read out loud to one another and even narrate to each other. You don’t have to hear it. 

Emily
Yeah, absolutely. 

Nicole
Another one that we’ve talked about before is maybe they both narrate orally a little bit. And then that student who’s learning to write a narration writes just a small part of the end.

There are a few things, but again it will really depend on the source material.

Emily
Well, I want to tackle the subject of placement and I’ll ask you guys because you both have the experience bringing older students into Charlotte Mason whereas mine have done it from the beginning. I hope all of our listeners have come to appreciate just how important narration is to the subject of Composition. It is far more important than simply learning how to format a five-paragraph essay, right? If you are bringing an older student into the Charlotte Mason method and they are not fluent narrators, time must be spent working on that first. 

This might mean you don’t ask them to write all the different types of compositions appropriate for their form, at least at first. You could let them try writing those and refrain from critique until their narrating skills have grown. We can hold off even on offering our point or two of correction if they’re still developing these skills. Do you guys have anything to add to that?

Nicole
One thing you mentioned in an earlier episode that I did with my older kids when they first started this was when they wrote one I had them read it to me. 

Emily
Yes. 

Nicole
And that kind of kept eyes off, kept my eyes off the paper and allowed them not to have any embarrassment over spelling or anything like that. 

Emily
And they might notice more, which I think is if they’re older like four and three and up, she said that’s when we do start offering the correction because they see a need for it. 

Nicole
Yeah.

Emily
Do you have anything else? 

Liz
I don’t think so. 

Emily
Okay. 

Nicole
I was just also going to say in my history, you know, we’re very careful to give enough of a story that they can narrate that without just parroting it back. But attention is the thing that has to be cultivated for this, and there were times where I had to say like just something so short, just to get them to lock in, get your brain here right now. And then I could read a big piece and they could narrate that piece. But it’s really hard to cultivate that attention. 

And I guess just one last thing is when they’re older and you’re asking them, this all comes naturally when they’re younger and you ask them to do it and they just do it forever. But when they’re older and there’s kind of a sense of embarrassment, you’re asking them to do this…

Emily
It feels uncomfortable.

Nicole
…having a little explanation. 

Emily
Why do I have to tell you, you just read it. 

Nicole
Yes, having a little explanation about why we’re doing this or what’s going on, what the purpose of this is.

Emily
Yeah what’s going on in their own brain, right. This is how you’re learning.

Liz
Yeah, because we have just read it. We know what we think. We don’t know what they think. 

Emily
Mm-hmm. I know what I heard, but I don’t know what you heard. 

OK. What other questions do people often have? 

Liz
You know, I think when you think about the overall big thing, the most common question I have is, well, feeling like I just need to get a course to work my kids through from like 10 years old up because by the time they’re in high school with my lack of skills, they’re not going to be able…I think we need to trust this method. If you do the things that she assigns at every level, you are going to be astounded at what your children can write. 

Emily
And as aforementioned, people who get into college cannot write. 

Liz
Yeah. Well, that’s true there too, but we don’t want to fall to that level for sure. That’s why we’re doing a better way of educating. But I cannot emphasize enough that you just don’t have the option of skipping narrations, like running out of time, just not doing them or blowing them off in any way, whether oral or written. And especially starting in seventh grade, relentlessly give them those composition themes and those delayed narration assignments. Don’t say, I just couldn’t think of a good thing this week or, you know, I’ve got to take some time and figure this out so I haven’t been doing it for two or three or four terms. Just…all you have to do is have them write so you can make time for that. Because it’s the accumulation of the comfort of writing over time that is going to make a difference when they get to high school. 

I also get a lot of questions about how do you hear everybody’s narrations? And I’ll just say right off the bat, there’s no simple solution to this. Every single year of your school, it’s going to change because your children have different skills and you have different children at the table and you have different things going on. 

When I am working out my yearly timetable, on a day-to-day basis I will actually consider if this child, I can’t hear two narrations at one time, so I schedule lessons so I don’t have two children having to narrate. And like Emily keeps pointing out, it’s only in the younger years, especially two or three times that they’re gonna have to be doing it. And once they get to be 10, they’re gonna be writing them. You don’t have to listen to that. They’re sitting there writing. 

Emily
I have my Form 2 and 3 students do several lessons together and I never hear their narrations. I mean I hear them across the room narrating to one another but I’m not hearing the words that they’re saying. 

Liz
Because the fact is they can narrate to the wall and it would be just as effective. 

Emily
It would. Because it’s for them. 

Liz
Exactly. 

And the other thing is to be diligent about planning lessons for tomorrow because you can look at tomorrow’s schedule and decide right then which lessons will be narrated, which ones will be written, oral, whatever, and in which children are going to be doing what. You’d just be surprised. It’s not as hard as it might seem. You might feel like, oh, I have five students. How can I hear 12 narrations a day? You don’t have to, is the point. 

Emily
I think another one…moms are, I mean, we’ve perennially heard this, I think, for the last 20 years, that how do I know they’re not making up their narrations? If we aren’t pre-reading or if we aren’t hearing their narrations. It is far harder to make up than to tell what you just read, right? But again, that is not the purpose of narration. The purpose is for them to learn, to dig in, to digest the reading and do their reading. 

Liz
If they’re all studying in the same room, you can be more aware. If you’re taking time to plan lessons for tomorrow, you know where they’re at in the books. I mean, sometimes even just skimming headings in a book gives you enough of a clue if they write about the discovery of some mineral in Alaska and you know they were actually studying about something in Mexico, you know that was all made up. 

Emily
I think that the we just had a mom recently who was brand new to having a consult with A Delectable Education and she was, I think, just taken aback. Like, wait, what do mean you guys all do school in the same room? And I think it’s much easier for a child to go off and not do their work and then they have to make up a narration. 

Liz
You’re really putting them in a moral dilemma too. 

Emily
I’m actually thinking back to my 12 year old self, I probably would have done the same thing. I wanted to read what I wanted to read. 

Nicole
I had a thought too that I wanted to bring up. So lots of times we talk about narration and just the act of knowing, but this has really brought, I hope shed a lot of light on this other aspect in the ride, it’s important.

And if we think about the other forms that people try to use for narration, like to draw a narration, there are times where in their drawing lessons they’re asked to draw a scene from a history book on something. But if we finish a lesson and we draw it on the regular, we are missing this whole aspect of this. 

Liz
Right. Because narration is a verbal activity. 

Emily
And I think there is a rule with them that Charlotte Mason talks about that. Like if the material is unable to be communicated clearly in words and it needs a diagram or a map, that’s their narration is the diagram or the map. But the lessons that we have been talking about that feed composition are all lessons that they’re taking in literary form. They’re reading books, and she was absolutely persistently adamant that literary form deserves a literary narration. So if it comes into us through words, it comes out of us through words. 

Liz
Right. And one other thought I just didn’t get a chance to say, when it comes to balancing their narrating and all of that. First of all, try to read their written narrations the same day they were written. It doesn’t take that long, you know, and that way you’re keeping up with it. Don’t think, I’ll save all this till Friday afternoon. Because Friday afternoon you’re going to want to leave the house. And also, I know it is not ideal, but it is possible to hear a child’s brief oral narration while the child you’re working with is doing their transcription writing or working out a long math problem. I mean, you’re not constantly involved with the seven year old every single second. 

Emily
And you’re also always telling people they need to train the child who needs to narrate to not just come in first. They need to put their hand on your shoulder like they’ve been doing in social situations. 

Liz
Correct. Or just give them a signal. I know you need to narrate. I’ll be with you in 10 seconds. And you get the little one doing something for a moment and you turn to the other child. This is part of learning to love their neighbor as themselves, right? They are cooperating to write a narration. 

Nicole
And if they’re old enough to write a narration they’re probably old enough to make lunch. So maybe you sit with your cup of tea after school while somebody else makes lunch and you read narration. 

Emily
Aww.

Liz
Yeah. Lovely thought. And I think just as well as keeping with the writing assignments and not letting them off the hook or blowing them off just because you are uncertain or feeling insecure or something.

Do not underestimate how much wide reading helps your children to write. Help your children get beyond only fantasy books or only survival books. Help them to take their novels seriously that are assigned every term. From fourth grade on, they have to be able to read widely to ever be able to write well. That would be my major point about this entire session on compositions. 

Emily
Well, I have always at these closing episodes talked about assessing their progress. So this really kind of goes along with the “point or two of correction”, you know, definitely. But even that’s not till the end. So we definitely want to be assuring ourselves, our child, that they’re making progress in their composition skills, even before they get to the point where we’re actually intervening, right, and bringing some things to their attention.

So I think this is the most daunting area. right, especially since the majority of us didn’t grow up practicing narration, it’s just a foreign a foreign concept, right? 

So the first thing to remember is that we gauge progress not against the ideal, the most perfect Composition writing or whatever. 

Liz
Yes. 

Emily
We’re comparing the child to themselves, right? Are you making progress compared to where you were last week, last month, last term, last year…whatever the case may be. So that means we do need to look back at their old narrations. In the early years when this is all oral, we still have their exams that are written down. So we have like a term by term look at what they have been writing.

Our Exam Planner has some helpful criteria to look at and questions to help you assess their work in the front matter of that exam planner. Also, I mentioned previously Jono Kiser did a teacher training video for us and that is available called “A Point or Two of Correction and Critique”. That has a lot of things that you can do, look at to help assess how they’re coming along. 

But some simple questions you can ask yourself are, is their narration or their composition relevant to the topic or the reading? Is it on topic? Does it show their engagement with the material and ideas? Are they showing interest in the things that they’re reading about? Have they improved their fluency of communicating? Do you know what they’re talking about and do you understand their meaning? And have they shown growth over the term or from year to year?

That’s it, and I think we can rest assured that if the answer is yes, even if it’s a tiny amount of progress, if they’re making some strides in these areas, they’re gonna be okay and they will take care of itself. 

Liz
And just maybe keep a folder and keep samples maybe once a month, set something aside and save it and you go back and look over those over a year or two and you will see the progress.

Emily
Charlotte Mason said, “the response of the young students to such a scheme of study is very delightful. What they write has literary and sometimes poetic value, and the fact that they can write well is the least of the gains acquired. They can read, appreciating every turn of their author’s thought, and they can bring cultivated minds to bear on the problems of the hour and the guiding of the state. That is to say, their education bears at every point on these issues and interests of everyday life, and they show good progress in the art of becoming the magnanimous citizens of the future.”

Well that is a lofty goal and that is it for our series on Composition. Resources that we mentioned today are going to be found in the show notes and from here we’re moving into more Language Arts by looking at languages both foreign and our native tongue as we continue to spread the feast of the Charlotte Mason method while discussing a Charlotte Mason curriculum.

Finally, in the highest forms, grades 10 through 12, Charlotte Mason allowed that students do need some definite instruction in Composition. We’ll be sharing what this looks like on the podcast today.

Listen Now:

Charlotte Mason, Volume 6 (Amazon) (Living Book Press – use code DELECTABLE for 10% off!)

ADE Vol 6, Chapt 10 Reading List

ADE Composition Planner

ADE Teacher Resource: A Point or Two of Correction and Critique

ADE on YouTube

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
Finally, we’ve reached the forum with some definite teaching in Composition. She said “some teaching in the art of Composition is advisable, but not too much, lest the young scholars be saddled with a stilted style which may encumber them for life.” It’s pretty severe. So before we talk about what this definite teaching looks like, Nicole, would you tell us what kinds of writing students in Forms 5 and 6 do? 

Nicole
Yeah, these have been years for honing skills and broadening application without abandoning the natural development that has brought them this far. So assignments might include essays on significant questions of the day or ideas from the term’s work. A precis, which is a concise, accurate summary of a longer piece. “Times Leader” is what Charlotte Mason called these. These are opinion pieces modeled on the editorial pages of the Times. They could write those. Speeches for delivery on a particular occasion or in defense of a position. Occasionally they could write debates, or maybe that’s like the intro for the debate because the debate’s more fluid, right?

And then still narrative verse and ballads often tied to current events. I loved your point of the Light Brigade in the last episode. That just really is an inspiring idea to me, I guess. And then now, you know, they started letters in Form 2 and then they were writing letters, maybe even to characters that they didn’t know. They were having to make that up in Forms 3 and 4. But now they’re going to write letters to publications, bringing their voice into the public conversation. That’s a pretty big deal. 

Liz
So when you said the Times, you meant the London Times. 

Nicole
Yeah, the Times Leader was opinion pieces. 

Emily
We would call them op-eds, right?

Nicle
Yeah, yeah. 

They also may be assigned to write lines of verse which must scan on abstract ideas or on current events. By this stage they’ve already practiced Scansion, we hope, in Form 3, analyzing the rhythm and meter of a line of verse and should be able to apply those skills well at this point. If they haven’t, they can probably pick it up pretty quickly if they’ve been reading poetry for a while. And so when writing in the style of a particular poet, they follow the conventions of that poet’s form, maintaining both the rhythm and the structures, they’re like the rules to these poems. 

And then again, all this work is undergirded by a steady diet of reading that shaped their style and their other things like their Grammar, and they’re not doing a lot of the things like Dictation and stuff like that anymore. Am I saying that right? 

So a lot of that is formed in those earlier years, but they’re using it now. So they should have pretty good mechanical skills by this time and be able to represent themselves well, whether it’s more of a creative piece, you know, like we talked about the letters between two characters, that are in two different books, or it’s this op-ed piece.

Emily
Well, the weekly format, they still have a weekly Composition lesson, but it actually decreases in time. It’s down to 20 minutes once a week. Of course, they’re still doing their written narrations at least two per day, which is the majority of their book lessons. They’re reading and discussing various kinds of writing and use those as models, right? Like you mentioned, essays, they would be reading essays and then asked to write them. So they still have models for these things in front of them. 

But that can be more drawn out. How does so-and-so make his point in this essay? Drawing their attention maybe a little more overtly than we have possibly done in the past. So we would be reading over their writing and Charlotte Mason says a point or two might be taken up in a given composition and suggestions or corrections made. 

So this is not bringing out all our red pens and marking up everything in their writing that needs improvement, but she said with a little talk, right? So we’re just starting to draw their attention to what they can improve and give them again the inspiring idea with a little talk. This is an oral lesson. That’s it. We’re not tearing their papers to shreds, but just choosing one or two things to draw their attention to and ask them to improve upon.

So we largely trust that they have found their unique writing voice by this time from the copious amount of literature that they’ve consumed so far. And again, style cannot be taught. So our criticism must focus on the mechanics of writing. That’s the kind of things that we’re going to be working out. Hopefully they’re writing a complete sentence. That’s the mechanical thing that you say. This is actually a sentence fragment. You need to finish your thought or any complete thought here. 

So our objectives are the same as in the earlier forms, drawing upon their habit of attention and their imagination, their free and fluent expression in the written form is what we’re after. 

So our teacher prep now, we have a little more definite work to do than we have thus far. We need to read their writing, right? A lot of times it’s not going to be in the moment or directly after. They’re going to use their time in their Composition lesson and we’re going to have to read it outside of that time.

And then we just are needing to identify what’s the biggest problem or what’s the biggest thing that they can do to improve, the most important thing they can do to improve a correction. And then we just talk over those points a little. So that could happen in their English Language lesson, maybe. It could happen the next week in their Composition lesson. We don’t have specific guidelines, so there’s just freedom for us to work on that as we will.

Nicole
I’m also thinking that a student who really takes an interest might be writing some of these things outside of lessons because they’re interested in that. 

Emily
That’s so true at this age, right? Yeah, they’re making decisions about what to do with their free time. 

And then also part of our prep is we need to give them the scope for all these different kinds of writing. So that does take a little preparation on our part. We need to, you know, come up with some ideas and we have a Composition Planner that is full of them that kind of details what was assigned and gives some ideas for those. So you can use that as a resource. 

My husband Jono Kiser also has given a workshop at one of our past conferences called A Point or Two of Correction and Critique and it literally is how to help your students become a better writer, but in Charlotte Mason’s style. 

So that’s it. I mean really we think okay some definite teaching but really it’s just still a little bit…

Liz
Vague? And that’s what drives moms crazy. They want a step-by-step guide. When she says a point or two, I just want to make a point or two. Because moms often feel like they don’t know what to correct. You know, like this feels like a big mess to me. Sure. So I think you’re helped by her advice to just correct one or two things, because just find one thing that’s wrong with it or two little things…see what their biggest problem is. Is their biggest problem that they keep forgetting to use punctuation or paragraphs or is it that they keep switching from past tense to present tense or something like that? Just pick one thing or two things.

Emily
And I would say spelling is probably not going to be the biggest thing, right? We live in the 20th century and spell check abounds, much to my dismay sometimes, because I really am writing the correct word that my computer doesn’t think I am trying to say. But really, some kids are just not going to be natural spellers and they’re done with that at that point. 

Liz
But my point about the point or two that you might just select one or two things is that then give them time to practice that. Like don’t use every single lesson to critique. Let them work that out. And you can even keep pointing it out. Like are you confused about what I mean by this? You know, I’m still seeing you do this. Could you try really hard today to correct that problem? 

One thing she points out somewhere, I’m sorry, I don’t remember exactly where I read this, but I always remembered that she said, usually by this age, kids are starting to really care how they’re coming across. So it’s not as daunting as it is to a 13 or 14 year old. When you have a 16 year old who knows maybe they’re headed for college or really wants their writing to be better, they’re gonna be much more open because they know a lot more about words, they care a lot more about words. 

If you don’t know what kind of things to correct, you know, there are writing guides out there that can help you. But I think some of the best things are some of the things that Jono brought out in that, is it readable? I mean, is this making sense? And if it isn’t in some place, why is that? So just hone in and say, I’m with you all the way till this part. And then tell me what you were trying to say here. Could you rewrite this so it’s more sensible? 

So that might be a help in some way. I mean, there are Grammar handbooks when it comes to mechanics, moms are always very concerned about the term paper. And I think that is a good thing. You know, they ask me… 

Emily
Oh yeah I meant to say that. One of the things you need to go over.

Liz
Yeah. So a research paper. There are lots of guides out there free online for how to do a research paper. Just follow the steps. 

Emily
And the biggest thing is citation and learning how to do works cited, so yeah. 

Liz
Yep. And that information is all out there. 

Nicole
Yeah, I use a generator.

Liz
And when I, when they say 20 minutes a week. So that gives you a clue right here that they might be working on something for several weeks running, you know, and a research paper might take a whole term or two terms, maybe one term of doing the research and another term in writing it or something like that. 

And Nicole mentioned a precis and that is an unfamiliar word to a lot of people, but basically it just means an abstract or a summary like when you read a formal journal entry there’ll be a one page summary that tells you what that article is going to be about. They have been reading essays and so they understand what they’re after here. If you just google online how to write a precis there will be two or three things come up that will give you the steps. It’s really a wonderful tool. It will help them tremendously in later research and stuff. If you can read a 10,000 word essay and distill it down to 300 words for your own use, you know, that’s going to be very helpful. 

Take someone like Francis Bacon that they commonly read even in ninth or tenth grade. He’s super organized and his essays aren’t super long. The language is difficult sometimes, but you can still see how he makes point one, two, three. And that helps kids a lot too. 

I don’t know, can you think of any other…? 

Children who maybe come to 10th or 11th grade who still have struggles with spelling and things like that that might be benefited from Dictation, even though Dictation is not on the schedule, you might want to include that for a year or so to help your child, you know, make some progress in spelling better. 

Emily
If they have not been…

Liz
…if they’ve never had it. 

Emily
I’m thinking of when I said earlier, like we just need to give it up. It’s like if they’ve been doing dictation since 3rd grade they don’t need any longer. They’re just not going to be a speller, guys. And it’s okay. 

Liz
And even Mason acknowledged that some people are not spellers.

Emily
So true.

Thanks for tuning in as we have progressed through Composition lessons across the forms. Next week, we will turn our attention to some practical questions we often hear. We hope you’ll join us next time, as we continue to spread the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method and conclude our series on Composition.

As our children move into middle and high school, we can ask them to write in various styles and genres. Join us on today’s podcast to learn what we can do as teachers to support them in their Composition lessons while not diminishing their unique voices.

Listen Now:

Charlotte Mason, Volume 6 (Amazon) (Living Book Press – use code DELECTABLE for 10% off!)

ADE Vol 6, Chapt 10 Reading List

ADE Poetry Scansion Lessons

ADE Poetry Scansion Additional Exercises

ADE Composition Planner

ADE Exam Planner

ADE on YouTube

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
Charlotte Mason says, if we would believe it, composition is as natural as jumping and running to children who have been allowed due use of books. They should narrate in the first place, and they will compose later readily enough. But they should not be taught composition. 

As we have discussed over the past few episodes narration forms the foundation, and is really the training ground, for composition. But as students move into middle and high school, they are asked to do more. Nicole, can you tell us what Composition looks like at this level? 

Nicole
Yes. So in Form 3, Composition expands to many new forms. Students are still going to write straightforward narrations and short essays, but they’re also tackling narrative and descriptive poems, often in the meter of the term’s poet, which they were doing some of in the previous form, but often tied to history or current events.

They may write ballads on heroic deeds or historical events. They are, you know, as I read these things I think, scenes for a play inspired by literature or history. They aren’t narrating the scene, they are writing the scene for the play. 

Emily
And you question the current events. Hello, I’m thinking of “Charge of the Light Brigade”. That was a current event at one time, right? Like a lot of poems come from things that… 

Liz
They have a lot more fun with their current events when they make it into a poem. 

Nicole
Letters. Now they already wrote some letters in the last form, but now they are going to write letters both real and imagined. Such as from one literary character to another. They’re also going to write dialogues. Again, this isn’t narration on dialogue they read. They’re going to write the dialogue or conversation between historical or fictional figures. Still subjects such as current events, nature observations, History, Plutarch, Geography…they all provide the subject matter. Even their Sunday readings at this point may lead to a composition topic. Recitation continues to feed their writing voice, and prepared Dictation and Grammar lessons support spelling and punctuation and increased awareness of sentence structure.

Then in Form 4, the variety continues. Students begin to work at greater length at this point and some new forms of writing appear. They may write essays “in the style of” an author studied that term. And this is the first time they’re going to write summaries of readings, which seems a little like narration, but maybe they’re… 

Emily
More honed. 

Nicole
Yeah, maybe closer to that original full text.

They’re going to write diary entries “as from a historical figure”. I liked that one. They may write orations or speeches modeled after examples in their studies and more advanced verse forms such as blank verse or heroic meter now. It’s very exciting. 

This is also a time when analysis and creativity often blend. Students may be asked to imagine a conversation between, I saw this example, “between Cromwell and Christian from Pilgrim’s Progress” or to compose a ballad about a current event. Throughout both forms Charlotte Mason still warned against correction or instruction, however she does clarify that exercises in Scansion are necessary at this point. 

Scansion is the act of scanning a line of verse to determine its rhythm. Students are now required to write verse in that scans, she says, right, such as a poem that scans, meaning they must follow the guidelines for whatever type of verse they’re composing. 

So by the end of Form 4, the student has an impressive toolkit, the ability to write in multiple genres, adapt their style to match an author’s, compress an idea into a clear summary, and even develop a topic at greater length. They’re really doing some stuff at this point.

Emily
Well, as far as the lesson format goes, this is the turning point here. Form 3 actually has a lesson time for Composition on the timetable. In Form 3, it’s once a week for 30 minutes. Form 4 has 40 minutes once a week. So these lessons are for their writing apart from the narration, of course, that just occurs during their other lessons. They can also be used for writing delayed narration, which this is the first age that they are asked to read something and then two days later write their narration on it. And that is just stretching their intellect and memory much more.

Oral narration, however, I just need to underscore this, is never given up entirely. Forms 3 and up were to write at least two written narrations a day. And you said they have at most three book lessons a day. So maybe they would write all of them, but not always, right?

Nicole
Meaning, sometimes they would say an oral narration, they wouldn’t just not… 

Emily
Correct, of course they’re narrating every lesson. Yeah. 

And then Form 4, they might have up to four book lessons a day. And so if they’re writing at least two, there would be at least one that was an oral narration. So the majority, but not all, lessons are going to be written narration. There’s still going to be room for oral narration. 

And then Charlotte Mason is adamant that until the student begins noticing a need for critique and revision of his work, we still do not do any formal teaching or training of Composition. We have our students read essays. They read letters and of course they read lots of poetry and they get their understanding of these forms pretty much organically, without us pointing out the characteristics of what makes an essay an essay, right? 

Liz
Right. 

Emily
We do however, as you said Nicole, start training them in verse scansion at this level but that occurs during their Grammar lessons, right? 

Nicole
Yes. 

Emily
So it’s not part of that Composition time but it’s aiding their ability to do the Composition prompts that Charlotte Mason laid– 

Liz
Composition time is just when they get to practice what they’ve been learning in Scansion. 

Emily
Yeah, or put it into practice as they write a poem that scans in the meter of Tennyson or whatever it is.

Okay, so yes, they’re composing their own verses that must scan. And then apart from their narrations, Charlotte Mason tells us that at this level, she said, “they should only be asked to write upon subjects which have interested them keenly”. So the topics of the compositions that we set for them are becoming a bit more abstract than in earlier forms. Now we’re kind of starting to bridge that idea of you’ve got a blank page before you, right? A little more just instead of retell this or tell me what you know about this, they’re having to do some more abstract thinking and so they need to write on things they’ve actually had time to think about. 

Liz
Yes. 

Emily
So I think that we’ll talk about in a minute but it is a responsibility we have as teachers to consider that as we set these. 

So the objectives for Composition are developing the habit of attentive reading. So they’re using their attention to read and that is coming out in their composition and also to express their ideas clearly and fluently to communicate well with writing. 

So our teacher prep, as I mentioned, is to take some care to select writing prompts that they’re going to be excited about, right? I think this is such a core idea at Charlotte Mason. We’re never trying to catch kids up about what they don’t know how to do. We’re trying to give them opportunity to show what they can do, right? And it’s the same here as we’re helping them develop their composition skills. So we need to set questions on topics that they’re interested in. 

And then also our teacher prep is we need to include Scansion in our Grammar lessons. 

Nicole
Yes. 

Emily
And if you don’t know what scansion is, as I did not until my husband wrote a teacher resource for us and I read through it and learned it myself, we do have one available on our website.

So as far as that we have the Scansion Manual and then now some additional Scansion Exercises and we do have our Composition Planner that can help you with all of the list of things so you don’t have to pause this podcast and try and take notes. This can help save you the effort. 

Nicole
Yeah, this is just the highlights; that includes pages of prompts and ideas. 

Liz
Basically it tells you everything we just said. 

Emily
And more. So what are some challenges of teaching composition at this level, Mom? 

Liz
Well, there’s so many, probably. Nicole’s always thinking of those children that are just coming into the Charlotte Mason way of doing school, maybe at 12 or 13 or 14 years old, and they haven’t had years of narration. And I guess I would just encourage you to start with the oral narration, but don’t overlook the written for very long time, because they will catch on quicker than a six-year-old will. And so they will catch up.

And I don’t think there’s any reason to hesitate on Composition because you don’t have to have narration skills to be able to try to write. Basically, they’re given this 30 or 40 minute lesson at this age. It’s a time limit. But in that time for once, for the first time, they’re kind of set free to roam where they will and put their ideas on paper. And a lot of them take to it quite readily, especially boys who are perhaps reluctant…I shouldn’t…some girls are also very reluctant to write, but…it is helpful, I think, sometimes when Nicole said have them write about a character, have them write about what they don’t like about a character or, you know, because teenagers love giving their opinion on negative things. 

Emily
(Laughs) Being critical.

Liz
And also, even if you didn’t have that wonderful composition guide, if you have Charlotte Mason’s volumes, you can always…because I’m always asked, well, what kind of things? I would just say a variety of things. Don’t give them the same kind of thing every single week. And start making a page in your planning notebook and jotting down ideas. Because when the day comes, you don’t want to be trying to scratch something out, you know, at the last minute when your mind’s on a lot of other things. So write down some ideas ahead of time. 

Nicole
I was thinking that those could come from some of the things the kids seem to be talking about– 

Liz
Well, that was why I was saying if you have a really reluctant writing boy, have him write about his latest soccer game or something he’s really interested in that will help him to start feeling more comfortable about putting ideas down. He’ll have lots of opinions maybe about sports or other things. But also if you look in the back of volume 3, Charlotte Mason’s School Education, where she has sample exam questions, or even our Exam Planner on our website. Any of those. 

Emily
Even in this section she gives lots of writing prompts.

Liz
She does in volume six. I guess what I’m saying is those are good ideas. You might not be studying Napoleon, just substitute Churchill or whatever you are studying in those questions because exams basically were the writing of compositions on things that they were assigned to do. 

Emily
That’s true. Yeah, and that’s made clear in the notes of “composition as assessed not just in the subject of composition but throughout the whole exam”. 

Nicole, I was thinking about when your son took Literature and Composition with Jono for the first time and he had to write, was it a sonnet? 

Nicole
Yes. 

Emily
And you were like he can’t do this. I never asked him to do it, right? But what did he do? 

Nicole
Yeah, he did it. So he, we had never done Scansion because I didn’t know what that was and Jono would much prefer you have done that before you get to his class, let me tell you. But he learned it quickly through Jono because he had been reading a lot of poetry so that came quickly. So he had to use those rules for the sonnet and then rhyme, you know, certain ones and, and he did it. And my son’s severely dyslexic. I thought there’s no way he could do this. So maybe that’s something to keep in mind too, is that don’t underestimate their ability. 

Emily
It’s kind of the balance of what mom was saying about, you know, like definitely give them time to do narration, but don’t neglect the composition. Cause we don’t know, they don’t know what they have in them.

Liz
I love it that Charlotte Mason actually waits till they have the skill to write comfortably enough, you know, but they’re becoming young people who have lots of ideas and opinions and they might even be contrary to yours. And the thing that’s valuable about composition over a regular written narration, which is just summing up what you have just read, they’re actually allowed to bring in their own thoughts to compare to other information they’ve gotten somewhere else and all that. 

How much should we help our child? As Emily said Mason didn’t want us teaching them how to write their compositions, and it is a big temptation to interfere. Let them experiment. I mean, you may get a wide variety of kinds of writing. They’re practicing, they’re trying things out just like they might be doing in their wardrobe at this point in their life, right?

I have been told by so many Composition teachers that they can help a child learn how to do all kinds of things for writing, but no one can teach you your writing voice. And this is what they’re learning how to get comfort with at this age, is how to put down their thoughts. And this was a weekly subject, right? You already said that. 

Emily
Yeah, once a week. 

Liz
So let them struggle and learn how to do it and just be an encourager and don’t critique and hand them back to them. Make notes for yourself and work on their paragraphing or things that you think are important in the other lessons. But this isn’t a time to really be working so much on various forms and styles of essays. It is a time for letting them learn how to put their thoughts on paper. 

And I just think, you know, some of you might be daunted by all the talk here about writing verse for this time. You might be shocked. When I first timidly told my son he was going to have to write whatever it was for Composition that day in verse, I was shocked at how he just readily said “sure.” And he did it, and that was even more shocking. 

Honestly, reading poetry is the best help you can give a future writer, and the value of this Scansion lesson that gets tackled at this stage is…I don’t even know how to estimate how valuable it is because they’re really learning to analyze. The best authors that I’ve ever read were those who are extremely acutely aware of the sound of words as well as the content. So I just encourage you to dive in. Most kids think Scansion is great fun.

Emily
Next week, we will wrap up our look at Composition lessons and dive into the rest of high school lessons. In the meantime, check out our show notes for the links to all the resources we mentioned today. We hope you’ll join us as we continue to spread the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method.