Narration, Narration

I think when I first started reading about CM one of the concepts that made inherent sense to me was 'Narration'. I just seems so logically, if the child can tell you back in their own words what you have just read then they have retained the information. Ergo, learning completed. However as I am sure many of you have experienced when trying to implement this wonderful technique in your home school, its easier said than done. When I first started it with Nuh, I explained to him what I wanted him to do and we started out with telling back every couple of sentences worth of reading. Then built on that, however I think that I was too demanding too exacting and some how this became a massive chore, and not some laid back wonderful mystical learning experience.

I started to dread it and so did Nuh, this was disastrous as most of the learning in CM requires narration, right? Whilst technically the answer is yes, if you read around on the web, there are many ways to accomplish this task apart from the 'you must insist on perfect attention' advice. From my forays into web land I learnt that I needed to relax, I also remembered that discussion is a valid tool in learning and so I decided that I wanted narration to be more of a discussion, so what if I am providing some of the information surely that shows that I am an interested participant in the learning and that this is something that is not being done to him. I also liked the idea of using note booking as copy work, so this is what we do.


So this is how we do narration, I read the chapter. This is not a continuous reading, I read approximately a paragraph then me and Nuh discuss what I have just read, either I will ask him to tell me something about what I have just read or what can he remember, we will then discuss it, especially if it was something interesting. In order to demonstrate this process, I will write about the most recent narration that we did for CHOW, chapter 24  , this chapter is about the Persia vs Greece.

the first few chapters deal with what the word versus means, which Nuh knows already so I am not going to ask him to narrate that, the next few paragraphs detail information about the Persian King Darius and how he wanted to conquer Greece, so he sent his son in law to conquer it. This is how the narration went:

Me: "Wow that King was really mad"
Nuh: "Yeah, he was, lets find Greece on the map"
Me: "OK, here it is"
Nuh: "Where was Persia" ( I pointed it out on the map)
Nuh: "So Persia was really big and it wanted to add Greece to its empire (I supplied, the word empire)
Me: "yes, that what empires do, they always want to expand, can you remember the Kings name?"
Nuh: "Darius, why was he mad at the weather?"
Me: "Because it wrecked his fleet, and he couldn't then conquer Greece"

Even though we sort of got off topic, Nuh always wants to know where these countries are on the map, so I point them out. (its so useful having the world map permanently on the table under a see through cover) We then got back on topic and discussed the salient points. I supplied one of the answers, which is natural in a discussion.

The next few paragraphs explain that Darius sent messengers to all the Greek cities asking them to send him some water and soil as a sign that they would surrender peacefully. Most did except Athens and Sparta, who decided to join together to fight him. Our narration is below:

Nuh: "where is Athens and Sparta" ( i point them out on the map) "Wow they are really small, they will never win against Persia"
Me: "they must have been brave to ignore King Darius and not send the stuff"
Nuh: "Why did he want earth and water?, its funny that they threw the messenger in the well" ( I explain the significance of the earth and water"
Me: "would you have sent the earth and water"
Nuh: "yeah, Persia is massive, its army must be massive, in minecraft you have zombie armies".
Me: "That's interesting but we are not talking about minecraft, lets focus"

I know its time to read the next chapter now, if he is trying to talk about minecraft. Nice try son, nice try.

The next few paragraphs outline how the Persian army was transported by Trireme's and how many soldiers they were. there are two really important points in this chapter to remember one, the number of soldiers and two, how many miles marathon is from Athens.

Me: "lets look at a trireme on the Internet"
Nuh: "okay, wow they must have being really squashed in. 120,000 soldiers is a lot" (nuh is good with numbers)
Me: "They landed a long way from Athens, can you remember how far"
Nuh: "26 miles".

Nuh definitely needs to know where things are on the map and have a clear image of things in his head. the next paragraphs of the chapter carry on like this, in a discussion format with me supplying some of the information and prompting him sometimes. The last narration always involves some kind of summary in discussion format.