Narration For Evaluating Reading Comprehension

When we first began homeschooling, we purchased a reading curriculum. The curriculum featured a reading passage and then pages and pages of workbook exercises to evaluate the comprehension of what was read. This worked okay with my oldest child, who loved to write, but the next students were bored to tears by this work.

Around this time, I discovered the works of Charlotte Mason. Especially The Charlotte Mason Companion, by Karen Andreola. This book helped me to see that reading comprehension could be checked by having the child tell back in their own words what was read. This became a favorite  method for checking reading comprehension as well as a wonderful way of working on speaking and listening skills.

                                    

In this short video, my daughter and I demonstrate a few examples of how we do narration.




If you would like to know more about narration, check out this post from Simply Charlotte Mason.

My son and I are enjoying this project of making videos about homeschooling, but we would love some feedback. If you have any suggestions for how we could improve, or have a question that you would love answered in a video, would you leave a comment below?

Thanks for reading and watching!

https://youtu.be/QKsRnC0FciE

2015 Curriculum Plan

   

                   

            

As we soak every moment out of summer, I am simultaneously planning and purchasing for our upcoming school year. This year I will officially have five students, although my oldest student is only in my school this year, because I discovered through trial and error that trying to get scholarship funds to a Christian college is much easier if you are applying as a freshman than as a transfer student. For this reason, my oldest son will do one more year of high school to better prepare him to transfer as a freshman, and hopefully get some financial help with his schooling. I will update next year, with the results of this experiment

I will also be sending my other high school student to community college with the oldest three. This is another experiment. Only time will tell if it is a good one. He took an online class at the community college last year and scored well, so I feel it is worth a try to let him take two days a week of classes with his older siblings. Although I am presently not willing to send my children to public school (aside from my spiritual objections, I feel that high school wastes a lot of time) I do believe that older boys especially might benefit from the instruction of someone other than their mother as they grow. Especially this mother. I love teaching the younger years, but because I tend towards being a little better at relationships than consequences, having the experience of a classroom with a teacher who doesn't love them, might benefit my kids as they grow. So far, it has worked well for my students, and we will see how this one does.

Without further explanations, here is the plan.

                              

1st Grade Boy

Math Mammoth, Level 1

Prescripts Scripture Cursive

Spell To Write and Read/All About Spelling

Explode The Code Book 2

    

Rod and Staff Reading, Grade One, readers only

Mystery of History, Ancient Times

    

Apologia Flying Creatures

    

4th Grade Girl

Math U See Delta

Bible Copywork

 Jr. Analytical Grammar

I.E.W. Ancient History Writing Lessons

Spell To Write and Read

    

Memoria Cursive

Ancient History Reading List

Mystery Of History Ancient History

Apologia Flying Creatures

8th Grade Boy

Life of Fred Algebra

                                             

Bible Copywork

Jr Analytical Grammar

 (I will do this as a class with the younger sister,

 followed by Jr. Analytical Grammar Mechanics or R&S Grammar)

Theme Essays with Co-op

I.E.W. Ancient History Writing Lessons

Ancient History Reading List

Apologia General Science

Studies in World History-Stobaugh

                                             

  

10th Grade Boy

Algebra-Community College

Theme Analysis with Co-op

Ancient History Reading List

Beginning Painting-Community College

Philosophy 1 (audit Community College class with older siblings)

English 1A (semester 2)

Studies in World History-Stobaugh

Spanish 2-BJU

12th Grade Boy

Study hard for SAT

Chemistry- Community College

Geometry- Community College

U.S. History

The children also do martial arts and ballet for physical education, as well as music lessons, for, well, music.

For science and history, we will focus more on notebook pages with illustrated and written narration than on using tests or worksheets to assess their progress. We will do experiments and hands on work in our co-op.

For Bible, I am using Long Story Short and The 18 Inch Journey as my curriculum. We will also be reading through the Old Testament and copying Bible verses. 

                                            

    

This post has affiliate links. 

Discovering Early Americans

We have started another wonderful year of learning and this year we are doing Early American History. We have used various curriculum in the past but this year we are staying on a budget with homeschool materials and just studying a different event in American History each month without purchasing a curriculum. We will then celebrate with a monthly project day with a few of our friends.

Although we don't have a formal curriculum this year, I own a few high school textbooks and student readers which I can use as resources for the younger children, as well as a wonderful set of timeline figures and blank maps which will be resources that I pull from.

Our first month was the study of Native Americans, and we found some interesting books to read about a few different tribes. Because the content of some of these books may be a bit dark, I will edit as needed while I read, but they were all fascinating.

Book List

Sing Down The Moon- Scott O'Dell

If You Lived With The Hopi-Kamma

The Serpent Never Sleeps- Scott O'Dell

The Trail Of Tears- Joseph Bruchac

                                                       

We used our Picture Story form to write and illustrate a book report for each story that we read. This has been a good way to use the writing skills that we have learned through Institute for Excellence in Writing, as well as a good opportunity to evaluate the story and get writing practice.

Another fun activity was to label a United States map with geographical features as well as the territory that each tribe was living in.

The big finale was our project day. The children dressed up in costumes that I had made for some of their older siblings. We mixed up corn cakes in honor of the Pueblo people that we had been reading about and cooked them over an open fire. We used long branches that we had pruned off our apple tree to build a teepee which we covered with an old sheet.

                           

The children also made beaded jewelry, bow and arrows and ground acorns in a grinding stone. They  ate snacks from the time period such as dried cranberries, popcorn and beef jerky.

They also presented reports, my youngest students had a report on the Pueblo people complete with a rigatoni noodle pueblo village and my 11 year old son presented his Pueblo report while donning an elaborately painted mask which he had copied from a book.

                                 

Although our project day incorporated elements from many different tribes, it was a fun filled time to experience some of what the early Americans had experienced.

After we had finished up with our project day, I handed out blank books.  I purchased these in the dollar aisle at Target and we will use them as a scrapbook of our year. The children will fill in one or two pages each month with some of the information that they have learned.

                 

We are having so much fun incorporating many elements of learning into our history studies this year! Reading interesting books to my children and exploring other cultures and time periods are just a few of many wonderful aspects of homeschooling. 

This post contains affiliate links. So far, I haven't made any money from it, but it is worth a try!

Reading Comprehension With Winnie the Pooh

Reading comprehension could be taught with a tedious workbook and a list of questions to ask or multiple choice options, but my preference is to teach it with the use of narration. Narration is the art of telling back what you have heard. As Charlotte Mason stated, 

“As knowledge is not assimilated until it is reproduced, children should ‘tell back’ after a single reading or hearing . . . A single reading is insisted on, because children have naturally great power of attention; but this force is dissipated by the re-reading of passages” (Vol. 6, preface).

In this excellent post from Simply Charlotte Mason, the simplicity and fun of narration is explained, I for one am a big fan of keeping things simple and fun, while maximizing quality literature. 

Having slogged through a boring grammar workbook for most of the year, I decided that my younger children needed a break, so we started a narration series with Winnie the Pooh. 

I read a chapter and then I have the children tell me what I read about. The more details the better, and narration improves with practice. This quickly lets me know how much they understood and absorbed from the story.

After the oral retelling, they spend some time writing sentences or paragraphs about what we read and drawing a picture to illustrate. I rarely get complaints from such a fun assignment, and it is nice to get a break from all the workbooks.

Even my youngest son got excited about the story, gathering his Winnie the Pooh and Eeyore to act it out. Rather unfortunately,  in his quest for a realistic retelling of Eeyore's lost tale, he cut the tail off the poor, sad donkey. However, a few stitches can hopefully fix this and I do love seeing him enjoying and reliving a good story.