Dealing directly with books

We've just finished our first term of year one of our curriculum, Ambleside Online. We school year round, and when the Nuthatch turned 6 in June I decided to start grade one with him instead of waiting until September.

It has been a fascinating term. The biggest adjustment to our learning has been the addition of narration to our schedule. Narration is where a student listens to a passage and then tells back what they heard. For example, if you've just read the first part of Little Red Riding Hood to your child, they might narrate by saying: "Little Red Riding Hood was on her way to her Grandma's when she met a wolf".

Narration is a difficult skill to learn. I've tried it myself with the classics I have been reading, and it is not easy. At the beginning of our 12 week term, I would read a passage and ask the Nuthatch to tell me what he remembered. More often than not, the answer would be 'Umm...nothing...'

So, I started reading smaller sections at a time. We spent a few weeks where I would have him narrate a sentence at a time. Narration takes a long time when you do this. Then the Nuthatch went through a phase where he would repeat back to me, verbatim, the last sentence I read. It was frustrating.

Part of the problem was that the reading selections had many new concepts and vocabulary words for him. To help with this, I would select five words from the passage that I was fairly certain he did not know, and we would talk about them. He wanted to draw pictures for the words, which I thought was a great idea, but soon this vocabulary lesson with the picture drawing was taking longer and longer!

Through all of this I held on to the fact that he would eventually develop the skill to narrate. I did not worry too much about all the content that he was missing when the reading selections went over his head and he could not remember anything. In Charlotte Mason's sixth volume, A Philosophy of Education, she says:

It does not matter much whether he understands this word or that, but that it matters a great deal that he should learn to deal directly with books. page 172

We have had a few bright moments this term. After about 8 weeks of working on narration he said to me, out of the blue: "Hey Mom, when I narrate something we've read, I remember it forever!" And a week or two later he said: "When you're reading to me, I see pictures in my head, and then I can tell you about them" (we were reading out of the Blue Fairy Book at the time). That is all the encouragement I need to keep going.

This week I have given him exams (I can post the exam questions if anyone is interested). They are not the sort of test that is graded, rather I wanted to see if he was remembering anything from what we have been reading. While there is lots of room for improvement, he has made such great progress with the skill of narration that I am quite pleased.

I used our camera to take videos of his answers to the exam questions. I think it will be very enjoyable to come back at the end of the year, or in a few years and watch these.

The video is particularly hilarious because it is so typical of what homeschooling with little ones is like. It is shaky at the beginning because the Bluejay is literally climbing on my head. In the background you can hear the Chickadee squawking "I can't see! I can't see!" as she tries to watch the video from the back of the camera. When he answers the question he is referring to a story that we read one time, two weeks earlier, The Frogs Who Wished For A King, from Aesop's Fables.

This second video is for all of you that have wiggly boys. We had read the story of the Rhino from Kipling's 'Just So Stories' over six weeks ago. I was pleased that he had remembered the general outline of the story. Our narration selections are only read once, so he has not heard this story again since late July.

I am eagerly looking forward to term 2. I can't wait to see how his skill of narration develops as he learns to deal directly with books.