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Activity, Change, Progress

homeschool grammar

Narration – Telling Back or Testing? Books that Make Teaching Narration Easy Peazy.

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Gauging homeschool progress is only natural. Besides, we do need to know what our children are retaining.

Narration not only works for filling a child’s mind with useful facts, but it is a gentle way of measuring progress.

Narration Telling Back or Testing. Books That MakeTeaching Narration Easy @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

Instead of administering a test, try narration.

What is narration? It is simply telling back what they have read or what you have read to them. It is telling back what a child knows.

A child doesn’t really own the information until he or she can tell it back.

Gentle Art of Narration – Equals Meaningful Progress

This is a Charlotte Mason technique that has produced positive results in children of all ages and learning styles.

In addition, it can be a useful tool to use when you have recently taken your child out of public school and has test burnout.

True, it can be used a lot of times with younger children, but for children that are having trouble comprehending, it is a great tool.

Start off small with a few lines from one paragraph, move to one paragraph to two short paragraphs, to a page and eventually the whole story.

I used the The Classic Treasury of Aesop’s Fables for longer stories and then for funand to fill my boys’ mind with beautiful thoughts, I used a A Child’s Garden of Verses.When they were real young, I used a higher elementary age book like American Tall Tales and A Child’s History of the World, which was a nifty way of adding history to the day too.
Instead of dumbing down the answers by making a child choose a multiple choice question for a story, have them tell you all the details or facts.

In time, as the child grows, help them to learn techniques like summarization. For now, narration is a very useful tool to find out exactly what the child knows.

They can delight in the love of being read to or enjoy good literature without the fear of reducing it to a worksheet that is dull and boring.

The next time you are wondering if your child is understanding what you are teaching them, ask them to tell back the story to you or to a friend.

Start off small and by letting them narrate to you, they can give the whole scope of their understanding instead of being limited by a few multiple choice questions.

Have you tried narration?

Hugs and love ya,

Also, look at:

Instant Credit, Instant Baby food – Why NOT Instant Homeschool?
Controlling the Time Spent on Homeschool Subjects or Running a Homeschool Boot Camp
Biggest Challenges to Homeschooling

A Reader Asked Is there a Spiral or Mastery Approach for English

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

A reader asked is there a spiral or mastery approach to English. Look at her question below.

Jennifer writes “I know that you wrote about Spiral VS Mastery programs for Math, but is there a such thing for English. My daughter has used 1st language lessons (1st, 2nd, 3rd) and then Rod and Staff for (4th-7th). We are pulling our hair out! Writing and English is not my thing, I would take math any day. I need help knowing what kind of learning those two Englishes are so that I can doing something different. I was thinking about Alpha Omega Life Pacs but would love some insight. Thank you for your time. I appreciate your thoughts and your response.”

The answer to your question directly is YES. There can be several approaches to how we teach grammar and writing.

{But indirectly, it matters more how we use it than the approach we choose.}

Demystifying the language arts process too by understanding that grammar and writing are two very different skill sets will help you to weigh curriculum differently.

A Reader Asked Is there a Spiral or Mastery Approach for English

Grammar a Tool or Ruler

At times it seems that grammar can be complicated to understand.

However, just like math, grammar is about learning and understanding rules. Some rules in math are simple to understand some not so simple. Does everybody master these rules? I don’t. I need constant reminders. Do these rules ever go away? No, they build on each other.

Spiral Approach

There are also exceptions to the rules in math and we make allowances for them. Learning the English language is similar.

So texts tend to be “graded” in grammar meaning they go from very simple to complex rules. Most texts, whether spiral or mastery, add some type of review.

The best way I found to use a text for grammar should be like we use a ruler to measure. Do we have the need to measure on a daily basis if we have basic skills in grammar? Absolutely not.

Grammar should be studied in use with writing to show the importance of it in the writing process. If we study grammar separately it may not hold any meaning to a child or to us.

Writing a Process

Writing on the other hand is a process. More important than memorizing a set of rules in grammar is that our children develop a strong writing foundation and equate writing with pleasure.

Writing is about communicating ideas that are important to us. Ideas can be serious, heartbreaking or even hysterical . Communicating ideas effortlessly builds meaning on the definition of the terms subject and verb.

In the writing process there is room for creativity.

Grammar rules are just explanations not creations or a creative like a composition.

Both texts you are using are very good resources but they don’t always work well with every learner or teacher.

Rod and Staff takes a more mastery approach while First Language Lessons seems to be down the middle because it uses a more incremental approach or step by step. Most grammar texts serve well as reference tools only.

Solution

Teaching writing by using something laid out like Institute for Excellence in Writing or WriteShop can bring relief when we are struggling. Rod and Staff is also a writing program with grammar but at times it can be hard to measure progress.

Approach for Homeschool English

Because good speech and writing well don’t just happen, we all need practice daily and models to follow. I don’t think you need any more grammar books but need help to apply the grammar she has learned to a writing program that will give you ways to chart her progress.

A writing program that gives you more direct instruction will put the emphasis back on why we learn the grammar rules and breathe life into language arts.

A Reader Asked Is there a Spiral or Mastery Approach for English

Your turn. Do you have any other insight or tips to share with Jennifer?

Look at these other tips:

Hugs to ya’ll..

Tina

Dynamic Reader Question Is there a Spiral Or Mastery Approach For English