Notes from Today

I don't normally post two days in a row, but I guess this is your lucky day. J  I had a couple of thoughts today that *I* wanted to be sure to remember, and so I thought I would share them here.  Maybe they will be helpful or encouraging to you too.

 

Grand Discussions Don't Have to Be Hard

The idea of the grand discussion is what it sounds like – after reading a selection and narrating it, you discuss.   Together you ask questions, dig deeper, draw out the bigger picture ideas, make connections.   Sounds great, right?  Of course it does.  I love the idea of having rich conversations about books and ideas with my children.  But I have also felt very overwhelmed at times to know where to start.  This kind of thing doesn't come naturally to me.  How do you know what questions to ask?  I've read books and listened to talks and seminars, and for the most part have still not really felt any better equipped to be able to do this. 

 

Today I realized, though, that it doesn't have to be hard.  That maybe, just maybe,  I've built it up in my mind as something more complex that it needs to be.   That maybe it's as simple as "should….?", "what if….?", and "did that make you think of anything else?"   (Those aren't original questions, by the way – credit goes to Andrew Kern and various Ambleside ladies. J)

 

Michelle finished reading The Princess and the Goblin today – the novel for Term 1 of Ambleside Year 3.  After she had narrated the final chapter, I asked her a couple of these questions as she thought back over the story as a whole – Should Irene have trusted her Grandmother?  Was that the right thing to do?  What if she had not?  What about Curdie…should he have….  You get the idea.  We chatted about that for a few minutes.   I ended by asking her if this story made her think of anything else.  Her response?  "It made me think about the part in Prince Caspian where the others didn't want to trust Aslan because they hadn't seen him -  only Lucy had and they didn't believe her.  But later they realized they should have.  They should have trusted Aslan even when they couldn't see him."

 

Wow.

 

Now that's not to say that this will happen with every book.  And that's OK.  But the point is that this discussion was not borne out of any intense preparation on my part. I did read the book before the term started because I was unfamiliar with it and I was passing it along to Michelle to read on her own, but did not analyze anything or plot out discussion questions ahead of time.   This discussion did not take a long time – 5 minutes tops.  It was not forced.  It was not contrived.  I started it off with a couple of very simple, open-ended questions and away we went.   The thinking, the connections – all hers.

 

It really was that simple.

 

When You're Feeling Blah About Nature Study, Go for a Walk with Your Preschooler

We live in an unpleasant urban environment.   At times this makes staying inspired about nature study really, really hard.   We are headed Stateside next month and I admit that I have been fantasizing about parks and proper nature walks and four distinct seasons and….anything but the same old stuff in our compound yard.  Again.  

 

Today, I was running an errand with five-year old Elizabeth.  We were walking along the familiar dusty road in our neighborhood – the road I've never bothered walking for a 'nature walk' because I didn't think there would be anything there worth seeing and observing.   As we walked along, though, she chattered away – mama look at this!  mama look at that!   We saw a really interesting green insect on a flower bush.  We saw a tiny spider on its web.   We talked about the rooster, hen, and five baby chicks walking along the side of the road with us.  We saw some corn plants and talked about where corn seeds came from.

 

There's a wealth of discoveries out there.  Even on my fairly unpleasant, dusty neighborhood road.    It almost made me sad to think of what we may have missed by dismissing that as a possibility these past 2 years simply because I assumed there would be nothing to see.    I'm making a note-to-self to try this road out as a regular nature-study route when we return next year.   There are things to be discovered even in the most unexpected places.

 

From My Commonplace: On Narration

If you have not yet read this fantastic article on narration, you should.  Go do it.  Now. J

 

I read this article a couple weeks ago.  After I did, I read all of the linked Parent's Review Articles, and made several pages of notes – tips, ideas, quotes.  Those articles are a treasure trove.  I came away with a fresh understanding of what narration really is and why we do it.  That's really where it all starts.  Once you understand the 'what' and the 'why', it makes it easier to put it into practice in an appropriate way, and to help your students grow in a way that doesn't interfere with the process.

 

This week I'm sharing some of the quotes I noted from that exercise.

 

"The less the teacher talks the more the class will have to think."

~GF Husband

 

Narration "properly dealt with leads to mental transfiguration."

~GF Husband

 

"We narrate and then we know."

~EK Manders

 

"[Narration] is not to tell you what you know already or even to find out what they know, but to help them to remember."

~EK Manders

 

"…narration…is founded on this power of mind to recall knowledge gained from a single reading or seeing or doing and the fact that such recollection makes so deep an impression on the mind that it remains for a long time and is never entirely lost."

~Helen E. Wix

 

"Such co-ordination grows from remembered past narrations over a wide field.  Some note in today's reading awakes an echo in some other subject or lesson so the power to compare and contrast and illustrate by example is developed.  This should lead to a valuable use of analogy, and application of past history to modern times and modern problems." (

Oo..that's just what I was talking about the other day….)

~ Helen E. Wix

 

"What a child digs for is his own possession; what is poured into his ear, like the idle song of a pleasant singer, floats out as lightly as it came in, and is rarely assimilated."

~Charlotte Mason , School Education, p. 177

 

"…in the act of narrating every power of his mind comes in to play, that points and bearings which he had not observed are brought out, that the whole is visualized and brought into relief in an extraordinary way; in fact, that scene or argument has become part of his personal experience; he knows, he has assimilated what he has read.  This not memory work."

~Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education, p. 16

 

 

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My Bookbag This Week:

Devotional: Easter Devotions in Living the Christian Year (Gross), The Christian Life: A Doctrinal Introduction (Ferguson)

Theological or Christian Living: The Story of Christianity, Volume 1 (Gonzales)
Book Discussion Group Titles: Watership Down (Adams), Macbeth (Shakespeare)

'Great Book': Inferno (Dante)

On Education: How to Read a Book (Adler), A Philosophy of Education (Mason)

Topic of Special Interest: The New World (Churchill)

Novel/Biography/Memoir: Children of the New Forest (Marryat) – Pre-reading for Ambleside Year 3

Read-Alouds with the Children: On the Banks of Plum Creek (Wilder), The Magician's Nephew (Lewis), Eric Liddell: Something Greater Than Gold (Benge)

On the Back Burner: Nicholas Nickelby (Dickens)

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Click Here for more Words

 

Narration as Translation

I, along with a few other ladies over at the AO Forum, are still very slowly plugging our way through Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book.  I really enjoyed the first couple of chapters of this book…and then he dived into all his 'rules' for analytical reading.  Oy.  I can't actually imagine myself 'analyzing' every word, sentence, paragraph in the way he describes.  I always thought I was a detail-oriented person, but I don't think that it extends quite as far as would be necessary to do what Mr Adler describes in his book.   I have very nearly set this book aside several times, but I keep on keeping on since a) our weekly reading assignments are very small and so don't take away much time from other things I'd rather read and b) it is one of the core books used in the upper years of AO.  I don't want to knock it until I've really given it a chance. 

 

So all of that is context to the section from chapter 9 that I read a couple of weeks ago.  All of a sudden light bulbs started going off in my mind.  Mr Adler is talking about the two tests one can apply to see if they really understand the crux of the point an author is trying to make:  Test #1: Retell the author's point in your own words.   Test #2: See if you can connect the author's point to a personal experience you've had or know about or something else you've read.    Hmm, sounds awfully similar to what Charlotte Mason recommended for her students:  Tell back what you just read.  Make connections. 

 

What was most fascinating to me is the parallel that Adler draws between this idea of retelling (narration) and translation:

 

" 'State in your own words!'  That suggests the best test we know for telling whether you have understood the proposition or propositions in the sentence.  If, when you are asked to explain what the author means by a particular sentence, all you can do is repeat his very words, with some minor alterations in their order, you had better suspect that you do not know what he means.  Ideally, you should be able to say the same thing in totally different words.  The idea can of course, be approximated in varying degrees.  But if you cannot get away at all from the author's words, it shows that only words have passed from him to you, not thought or knowledge.  You know his words, but not his mind.  He was trying communicate knowledge, and all you received was words.

 

The process of translation from a foreign language to English is relevant to the test we have suggested.  If you cannot state in an English sentence what a French sentence says, you know you do not understand the meaning of the French.  But even if you can, your translation may remain only on the verbal level; for even when you have formed a faithful English replica, you still may not know what the writer of the French sentence was trying to convey.

 

The translation of one English sentence into another, however, is not merely verbal.  The new sentence you have formed is not a verbal replica of the original.  If accurate, it is faithful to the thought alone.  That is why making such translations is the best test you can apply to yourself, if you want to be sure you have digested the proposition, not merely swallowed the words.  If you fail the test, you have uncovered a failure of understanding."

 

~Mortimer Adler, How to Read a Book (emphasis mine)

 

Isn't that an interesting analogy?  Maybe I just thought it was interesting because I live in a bilingual country and do a fair amount of going back and forth between English and French myself.   The church we attend is [mostly French but kind of] bilingual, so sometimes the sermon portion of the service is translated from French to English (or the other way around, depending on who's preaching).   Given that I am fairly comfortable in both languages, it's usually pretty easy to tell when the translator really understands the message – he's digested it and turned it around quickly into proper idiomatic form in the other language.  Other times you can tell that he's just grasping at words and translating literally word-for-word…at best it's a little stilted and at worst doesn't quite work (think: Google translate).   A good translation – that's hard work!  Often times over on the Forum, people will post about how their child is struggling with narration, and the encouragement and advice often given in this situation is that narration is hard work, it's a skill that takes time and experience to master.  One has to attend, to comprehend, to sift through and organize the information that has been taken in, and then reproduce it in one's own words – in many ways the same thing that a translator is doing when he takes a message in French and has to turn it into English.  "Tell back the story" seems simple…but when thinking in terms of translating the ideas the author is sharing from his 'language' into your own, I think it brings out just how much work it is - particularly for a child who has only ever been asked to spit back 'words' in reply to comprehension questions on a worksheet.  I also liked how he used the swallowing vs. digesting analogy in that last line – fits right in with Charlotte Mason's analogy of spreading the feast before our children.   Narration, while hard work, also ensures that our students are truly digesting the feast, and not just gulping and swallowing without tasting and savoring and being nourished.

 

 

Click here to find links to more quotable books for this week.

 

Some Lesson Planning Notes for a New Year

During our recent break from school, I took the time to do a fairly quick re-reading of Charlotte Mason's first volume, Home Education.   I am really glad that I took the time to do this as I have most definitely gained some fresh inspiration for the coming year!  I made some notes of things that stood out to me to apply this coming year and thought that I would share them here both for my benefit (organized and in one place!) and perhaps for yours too.

I shared my notes on nature study and outdoor time here. 

 

Today I'd like to share a few of the ideas that I gleaned with relation to lesson planning, specifically with my 8-year-old Year 2 student in mind.   She has been doing oral narration for more than 2 years now and has become quite proficient.  These ideas were highlighted with her advancing needs in mind, yet still keeping them within the guidelines that Mason herself laid down for children under the age of 9.  

 

The Habit of Thinking

"This is the sort of thing that the children should go through, more or less, in every lesson – a tracing of effect from cause or cause from effect; a comparing of things to find out wherein they are alike, and wherein they differ; a conclusion as to causes or consequences from certain premises." (Vol. 1, p.151)

 

These are ideas to keep in mind for post-narration discussion where appropriate.  Narration can extend beyond just simply "telling back", especially as the child grows older and gains experience.

 

On Memory and Recollection

"But one verb is nothing; you want the child to learn French, and for this you must not only fix his attention upon each new lesson, but each much be so linked into the last that it is impossible for him to recall one without the other, following in its train." (Vol. 1 p.154)

 

This isn't just for French lessons, either!  This is a good reminder to link ALL lessons to the previous one.   A simple way to do this is to do a quick recap of the previous lesson.  I particularly love the train image she gives here.

 

Writing Assignments appropriate for children under 9

Charlotte Mason didn't encourage a lot of written output in the earlier years of formal education, preferring instead to allow those skills to develop naturally through copywork (physical act of writing) and oral narration (organizing and composing ideas orally).  That said, this doesn't mean that all written work needs to be avoided until the child is 10 as it sometimes seems to be implied.  Mason suggests the following ideas as appropriate introductions into written composition for children under the age of 9:

• Writing a part and narrating a part of a reading
• Writing the account of a walk they have taken
• Writing the account of a lesson they have studied
• Writing about some other simple matter that they know

 (from Vol. 1, p. 247)

 

On Original Illustrations

Mason generally preferred that children be 'left to themselves' in the area of artistic development, but she did offer a lesson outline for how a teacher might help her students on occasion produce an original illustration to accompany a lesson studied.   I found these ideas helpful since Michelle already does like to do drawn narrations, and I think some of these ideas may help her to pay greater attention to accurate details.

 

• Draw from the children what they know of the story that is to be drawn (perhaps via an oral narration?)
• Read the descriptive section again if necessary, and look at pictures of dress, etc of the time period in question.
• Draw from the children what mental pictures they have formed.
• Have them produce their mental picture on paper.
• If possible, show them an original illustration of the scene by another artist for purposes of comparison.

 (from Vol. 1, p.307)

 

Last year, we did a weekly notebook page on which she would illustrate a favorite scene from one of the week's readings and write 1-2 sentences describing what she drew (in addition to a more detailed oral narration at the time of the reading).  I'm hoping the writing and illustration notes above will help us take this to the next level this coming year.

Something New To Us This Year: Notebooking

Last year I did a series of posts on “how we do” most of our school subjects.  (I never did get around to math or French…maybe because math isn’t that exciting since we mostly stick to our curriculum and French I still haven’t really found a groove for? Anyhow…)   A lot of that information still applies.  But there are a few things we are approaching differently this year, and I look forward to sharing some of those things with you.   One of those things is that we’ve added in some notebooking.

 

Oral narration is still a staple around here – we still orally narrate all of our school readings.   At the end of each “week” (as per the AO schedule) we take some time to add any new historical figures to our timeline book (that’s new too…post forthcoming) and she chooses whatever reading was most interesting to her that week to do a notebook page about.   She has really taken to this!   I only asked her to draw a picture and write a 1 sentence caption, and she ended up writing a whole paragraph!   

 

A recent notebook page from an installment of Dangerous Journey

 

We are collecting her notebook pages into her school record binder, so by the end of the year we should have a really lovely record of some of the highlights of our reading for this year.   We are using a very generic template for simplicity (I printed off a supply of two different styles for her to choose from), although if you get really in to notebooking there are TONS of resources (both paid and free) to choose from online.   We may eventually divide out into more subject-specific notebooks, but I didn’t feel that was necessary if we are only producing 1 page each week.

 

Normally, Charlotte Mason didn’t recommend asking children to produce written narrations (of which notebooking is a form) before the age of about 9 or so.  The thinking behind this is that the child first must feel comfortable with the mechanics of handwriting as well as have developed the ability to narrate orally (organizing and expressing thoughts in one’s head and then verbally) before melding these two skills together.   Michelle, a 7 year old first-ish/second grader, is very comfortable with these two skills separately and often chooses to write on her own (letters, lists, stories)…so I felt it was time to start gently nudging her in this direction.    If your child is not ready to do write on their own (meaning that the physical act of handwriting and/or the process of organizing one's thoughts through oral narration is still laborious for them), but the idea of notebooking intrigues you can always be a scribe for your child and take down an occasional oral narration for your child to illustrate if they so desire.  We did that some last year and I found it very motivating for Michelle when I took down what she said.  And as you can see we are starting very small – 1 page per week on a topic of her choosing.  Eventually we’ll work up to 2 pages per week, and then 3 until eventually she is producing some type of written work daily – probably a mix of topics of her choosing and topics of mine.

 

So do you use notebooking in your homeschool?  Please share if you do – I’d love to see how you do it!

 

 

 

How We Do Language Arts, Part 3

This post is Part 3 in a series that gives a snapshot of what Language Arts looks like in our home right now, with a first grader who is reading well.

You can find the other parts here:
Part 1 - Intro, Literature, and Narration
Part 2 - Handwriting, Copywork, Reading, and Spelling

Today's Installment - What we Don't Do, and Helpful Links

What you’ll notice we aren’t doing….

Creative Writing, or Tons of Written Work in General

CM didn’t advise much written work for young children.  Gaining ideas from living books (something to write about), oral narration (organizing thoughts and ideas), and copywork (the mechanics and conventions of writing) all lay the foundation for future written work, however.   Michelle often chooses to write on her own – letters, lists, etc – which I encourage, but I do not require at this stage in the game.   I like how in her book, Writing with Ease, Susan Wise Bauer has laid out a path to begin by practicing all of the skills of writing separately (through reading, narration, and copywork) and then gradually bringing them together so that by 4^th grade or so the student has the tools to begin writing original thoughts on her own.  We don’t follow the suggestions from this book exactly (Susan Wise Bauer is writing from a classical education perspective, rather than a CM perspective, and her take on the purpose and method of narration are a bit different), but I found her sequence of 'baby steps' really helpful to see the big picture of the skills that a child needs to develop in order to become a proficient writer.  As per SWB’s suggestions, once a week or so I will record one of Michelle’s narrations and have her use a sentence or two for copywork as an introduction to putting her own thoughts onto paper.

Grammar

CM also didn’t recommend a study of formal grammar for young children.  She maintained that grammar study will be more meaningful to a child who has already gained experience with reading and copying from good models.   As such, we won’t study grammar formally until 4^th or 5^th grade.  In the meantime, we take a few minutes each week to point out some simple grammar and mechanics functions in Michelle’s copywork selections:  when to use a capital letter, what all the different punctuation marks mean, etc.

More Resources for CM-style Language Arts

If you are intrigued by the CM language arts methods and what to read more in detail, here a couple of good links to get you started….

Series on Language Arts from the SCM Blog

SCM Discussion Forum Threads on Living Books, Narration, Copywork and Composition, Dictation and Spelling, and English and Grammar

AO Language Arts Page

Wildflowers and Marbles Language Arts Series

Hope this has been helpful for those looking to implement a Charlotte Mason education in your home.

How We Do Language Arts, Part 2

You can find Part 1 (Intro, Literature, and Narration) of this series here.  Just to recap, this is a snapshot of what language arts instruction looks like right now with a first grader who reads well. Today's installment: how we approach handwriting, copywork, reading, and spelling.

Handwriting and Copywork

Michelle’s print handwriting is excellent, so we moved on to cursive at her request this year.  We are simply working our way through a workbook for that.  The main difference is that although the work book is set up for a page to be completed each day, we usually only do one line at a time, unless she is really keen to do more.  Charlotte emphasized quality over quantity and maintained that it was better for a child to do one letter perfectly than a whole page sloppily.   We are making good progress.  Once she has learned all the letter forms, we will transition slowly into doing all of her written work in cursive.

 In the meantime, we continue to do copywork in print several times each week.  Copywork is so much more than handwriting practice!   Not only is the child gaining practice in the mechanical art of writing, she is also internalizing good spelling, good style, good sentence structure, grammar conventions, etc.  Michelle usually copies 1-2 sentences at a time, depending on length.  Sometimes she chooses something from a books she has enjoyed and other times I choose.   At this point we do copywork 2-3 times per week, but when we are done with the cursive instruction phase, we will bring it back up to daily.

Reading

Michelle is already reading well (2^nd grade level books pretty easily), so we are no longer doing formal reading/phonics lessons.    We learned to read with a combination of phonics and sight words which served us well (but is a whole other post for a whole other day….maybe soon since I get asked about it a lot.  We shall see.)   So for now, I encourage her to read out loud to me (or to her Papa) regularly – from her readers, from our God’s World News magazine, and we buddy read from the Bible.  This keeps me abreast of her progress and allows me to spot teach on any words or sounds that still cause her difficulty.   She is also starting to choose to read independently more and more.

Spelling

This is the one thing that we personally do that isn’t really purely CM.  Charlotte didn’t teach spelling directly, arguing instead that a child who has had a steady diet of good books and copywork taken from good books will internalize correct spelling.   Older children (perhaps from 4^th or 5^th grade on up) in Charlotte’s school’s did dictation exercises.  I agree with the premise that children who have read widely are more likely to be naturally good spellers.  BUT…I also believe firmly in giving a child the tools she needs to figure out how to spell for herself.  I saw too many kids in my classroom teaching days that just couldn’t spell, and didn’t hardly know where to begin.   When Michelle started wanting to write more on her own and was asking me how to spell this and that every time I turned around, I knew it was time to start giving her these tools.   We use All About Spelling which is a phonics-based, mastery-based, multi-sensory program (in contrast to the ‘memorize these words for the test and forget them’ approach.)  I’ve been pleased with her increased confidence in both writing and reading since we’ve started using this program.   We will continue this up until 4^th or 5^th grade, as long as it seems beneficial to her, and then switch over to CM’s dictation approach for the middle grades.

Next Time, the Final Installment: What we DON'T do, and Helpful Links

How We do Language Arts, Part 1

One of the unique features of a Charlotte Mason education is the way that language arts is handled.  The CM approach to language arts is different from what most of us grew up with – it is very holistic, does not involve a lot of busywork, and can be integrated across the curriculum once you understand the methods.   Much has already been written about CM language arts methods already (I will link to a few helpful resources at the end of the series), so I won’t go into too much detail on that.   But, I do want to give you a snapshot of how we translate those methods into everyday life in our home, right now.  (I will revisit this post from time to time as we progress and things change.)  Currently I am teaching a first-grader who is already reading well.   This has turned into a monster of a post, so I will divide it up into a couple of parts.  So for us, this is what first grade language arts looks like….

Literature (including poetry)

Excellent literature is one of the cornerstones of a Charlotte Mason education.   In addition to literature to be read for its own sake, Charlotte advocated the use of ‘Living Books’ across the curriculum – for history, for geography, for science and nature, and so on.   That is not to say that there isn’t a time and place for textbooks, but when at all possible Charlotte encouraged the use of interesting, well-written, and appropriately challenging books to feed the mind with ideas, rather than dry lists of facts.

Currently, we are using literature as the basis for our history, geography, nature, and character studies (see the Goals and Curriculum Link in the sidebar to see our specific resources.)  We also read aloud from both chapter books and picture books daily – we have a story time mainly for the little ones right after lunch and also a chapter book going as part of our bedtime routine.

Charlotte also encouraged the regular reading of poetry.  I did NOT grow up with an appreciation for poetry, but by simply reading a quick poem at the start of our school time each day, my kids are gaining more of an appreciation for it than I had.  (We actually increased our poetry reading to daily at Michelle’s request!)   At this stage in the game we just read and enjoy – we don’t analyze, we don’t write.

Narration
  Narration is the cornerstone of CM education.   At its simplest, narration is simply the child telling back something that she has read (or had read aloud to her.)  Sounds simple enough, but in the act of telling back involves hearing, understanding, organizing the information in your mind, and then choosing the correct words to express your ideas.   Not as easy as it sounds!    For young children, narration is done orally.   Later on, as narration skills develop and the mechanical skills of writing become more natural, narrations can be given in writing.   Because narration is complex and demands the use of a lot of the brain, it is not recommended to require narration from a child younger than age 6.

Because of this, narration is still fairly new for us.   We are still working on building up Michelle’s oral narration ability.  She is not a natural narrator, but has been progressing nicely.   Right now, we narrate:

-          Aesop’s Fables: we are reading through Aesop’s Fables this year specifically because they are highly recommended as practice for beginning narrators.  They are short and usually amusing.   We read one just about every day, and after I’ve read I ask Michelle to tell me what happened.   Her narrations for these are usually quite good.

-          Bible:  I also ask her to “tell me what happened” when we read Bible stories.  Since these are often longer, I usually stop every couple of paragraphs to track what has happened in the story so far. Sometimes we 'buddy narrate' - this helps to model what I am looking for to keep the details in a complex story straight.

-          History and Nature: Our history curriculum this year consists of short stories taken from the lives of various famous people throughout history, both from America and around the World.  Since my goal for history at this point is simply to familiarize her with famous people and events I don’t expect terribly detailed narrations.  I usually ask her to tell me the most interesting thing she learned about ______.   The same goes for narrations from our nature-related books.

-          Geography:  For our geography book, I usually ask her “what was your favorite part of the story?".   I record this and she draws and accompanying illustration.  We usually look up pictures of the area in question on the internet when we read, and she uses these pictures as inspiration for her drawings.

-          Character Study: For our character development book, we usually walk back through the basic plot together, and then I might ask her to tell me what the character in the story learned.

At this stage we aren’t narrating literature, just because she is still a beginner and I like to keep our family read-aloud times more lighthearted.  But as she grows into reading more independently, I will expect narrations from literature selections as well.

Next time: Handwriting, Copywork, Reading, and Spelling