Every Waking Hour

From The Charlotte Mason Carnival

I really liked this post on different forms of narration.

I have read many discussions online about what to do for children who don’t yet understand how to narrate or who are resistant to it. Lots of people have lots of neat suggestions about how to vary narrations which include everything from drawing to acting out narrations to making posters to answering any number of leading questions that serve to break the narration down into manageable chunks. I have dutifully kept a record of many of these suggestions on the off chance that I would need them for some unforeseen reason in the future. Now I have suddenly realized that I can use some of these suggestions now but for an entirely different reason than the ones usually offered in these discussions. It has taken me all this time to “change set,” as it were. Instead of thinking of different approaches to narration as being only remedial in some way or learning style adaptations or boredom dispellers, I now finally realize that certain variations on guiding narrations can also be suggestions towards their future deeper understanding

In fact, I need these different approaches to narration now to begin subtly laying the groundwork for teaching literary analysis! It is like using Mad Libs and copywork to teach grammar. The child seems to only be playing a game (Mad Libs) or practicing handwriting (copywork) but if handled thoughtfully by the parent/teacher, the child is also effortlessly learning about adjectives, proper nouns, punctuation, styles of writing and so on.of the structure of literature.

There are also lots of good links to narration ideas.