Narration is the primary learning tool used throughout all the subjects in a Mason education. Mason says, "This, of telling again, sounds very simple but it is really a magical creative process by means of which the narrator sees what he has conceived, so definite and so impressive is the act of narrating that which has been read only once." (Philosophy of Education, p.261). Mason called narration "the act of knowing." It is the process all students need to complete so they can assimilate knowledge and make it their own.
Tips on Beginning Oral Narration
- Expect to start slowly: Even the most loquacious child can struggle with the feeling of being put on the spot when asked to give a narration as part of formal lessons. Keep your expectations low, but be consistent about asking for narrations, and the student’s fluency with narrating will build over time.
- Recap: Begin each lesson asking the student to briefly recount the previous reading or lesson.
- Provide only a single reading: As Charlotte Mason writes, “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.” The practice of narration builds the power of attention when students know they will not hear the passage multiple times. However, if you observe your student continuing to struggle to recall the reading and especially if you suspect some sort of executive function deficit is present, try introducing a squiggle narration or allowing them to reread a passage. To conduct a squiggle narration, give the student external supports such as a paper and pencil or modelling clay and have them make some sort of squiggle during various events of the narrative as you read. Then have them narrate and tell the story as they look at their squiggles. Other students may benefit from notecards which they can jot down events on and then use to retell the passage. The goal is to meet students where they are and help them to grow.
- Adjust the length of the reading to the abilities of the student: Beginning narrators cannot be expected to tell back entire stories or chapters. Therefore, the parent/teacher can stop and request a narration multiple times during the course of a reading, such as after several sentences or a single paragraph.
- Narrations can be creative: Students should be encouraged to narrate through drawings, play-acting, building (LEGOs or other building toys), or recreating an element of the reading using any other means that sparks their interest. Encourage students, as they engage in these creative activities, to describe and recount what they are doing and what they have learned from the reading.
- Model for your student: When students are beginning to narrate, they may need some additional modeling from their parent/teacher. This can include techniques such as sharing parts of the narration between instructor and student, or requesting the narration in such a way that nudges them towards a topic (e.g., What was the most interesting part of today’s reading? Or, “tell me what you remember about Templeton the rat.”).
- No interruptions: Narration, while deceivingly simple, requires a complex set of cognitive processes from the student, including recall, sequencing, and translating ideas into words. Interrupting or questioning a student in the middle of a narration will only hinder this process.
While students are exclusively providing oral narrations in Grades 1-3, the exercises in penmanship, copywork, and dictation included in Alveary Reading Lessons are preparing them to begin written narrations. Grade 3 students can also be encouraged to produce a written narration every second week, once they are confident in these skills. In the early grades, parents/teachers can also illustrate the link between oral and written narrations by occasionally acting as scribes and writing out a student’s narration, either as it happens or from a recording. By Grade 4, most students begin writing one or two of their narrations each week, with the remainder continuing orally.
Introduction to Narration (23 min.)
In this video, Dr. Carroll Smith discusses why Mason used narration as the primary mode of learning. He gives guidance for beginning narration with new students, as well as tips and ideas for those who are familiar with narration.
Process and Progression of Narration (27 min.)
Kerri Forney and Nancy Kelly talk about the way narration changes throughout the grades.
Expanding Narration
As students gain confidence in writing and the cognitive load to get words on paper (or typed) lessons, some students may begin to find basic written narrations tedious and time consuming. They can orally narrate so much more easily and quickly! One solution is to suggest students type more of their narrations as they are comfortable. In general, it is helpful to remind students that narration is a way for them to process and think more deeply about what they read. It isn't about proving to the teacher that they read a book or did an assignment but a chance for them to actually know it and better remember it themselves. It may also help to suggest they think of writing their narrations for a friend or someone who has never read the book rather than for the teacher, who might already know the story. Encourage students to spend the full remaining time of a lesson on their narrations and give as much detail as possible.
Additionally, spread across the curriculum are various types of writing prompts which all count towards the 8-10 weekly written narrations that are eventually required by Grade 8 and beyond. These include notebooking prompts, science lab notebook entries (both pre-lab and post-lab narrations), extended nature notebooks descriptions, concept maps, character sketches, and more.
Another approach to keep written narrations fresh and interesting (and point to the possibilities in and pleasure of writing), is to have your student try narrating in different ways (lessons sometimes include specific suggestions). In addition to just “what did we read about?”, other options include asking students to:
- “Write the story of ___.” (Example: “Write the story of the battle of Troy.”)
- Imagine they are a character in the story and write what happened as a diary entry (Example: pretend you are Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress and write a letter or diary entry telling what happened to him in today’s chapter.”
- Tell back the reading as a comic-strip style narration, combining illustration and words.
- Tell back the reading as a poem.
- Tell back the reading as a news report or interview.
- Tell back the reading as a scene in a play.
- Pretend they are the author of the book and have them write their narration as if they are telling the story of the chapter they read for the book's first readers. (Then have them read it to someone who hasn't read the book!)
All these options should only be offered as possibilities for students to explore as they are interested at first. Once students are comfortable with basic written narrations, some of these other types of narrations can be assigned as composition assignments.
The practice of narration not only helps students learn to think cohesively about their reading and tell it back sequentially, but it also naturally affords students the opportunity to experiment with a range of genres and styles. Narrations of stories tend to naturally include some of the structure and style of good fiction. Narrations of nonfiction tend to focus on the topic and include supporting details. Narrations of news stories often adopt a journalistic tone. And narrations of essays sometimes utilize the same tools of persuasion found in the work being narrated. In a sense, then, some narrations are expository writing exercises and others creative writing exercises. When viewed from this perspective, it is easy to see how narration leads to good writing, as it allows the students to gain fluency with words and unconsciously play with various stylistic devices while relying on someone else’s content until they mature in the knowledge and experience necessary to have something original and worthwhile to say.
Tips for Narration and Setting Up a Lesson (9 min.)
Narration as Storytelling (20 min.)
In this video, Dr. Shannon Whiteside shares some insights she gained from her case study of a 5th grade classroom and their oral narrations in history class. She explains how narration is not simply a reading comprehension activity that imitates the author's words, but narration is a practice that allows students to display originality, creativity, and the art of storytelling. Narration also shows the moral stances of the students as they tell the story from their perspective.
Transitioning from Oral to Written Narration (3 min.)
Tips on Beginning Written Narration
- Hybrid narrations: Write the beginning and then orally tell the rest, or vice versa. When students start writing narrations, you will notice an immediate drop in both length and quality, because now the ideas, vocabulary, spelling, grammar, and motor skills are vying for a limited amount of space in the working memory. In other words, the cognitive load of narration has suddenly increased substantially. Teachers can relieve some of that pressure by allowing students to write until they begin to get tired and then to tell the parts they couldn’t write for themselves. The amount students are able to write independently should increase steadily until they can handle a whole narration. Even then, a written narration may not be as lengthy as an oral one.
- Oral elaboration: Have students write down brief sentences (even numbered statements) telling the sequence of events and then have them provide more details orally about each point.
- External supports: Some students may find writing easier if you provide external supports before writing, such as index cards that can be arranged and re-ordered. You can also encourage students to talk aloud as they write or use speech-to-text and then edit/organize their words.
Narrations & Writing Skills
We recommend a balanced approach regarding spelling and grammar in written narrations. The atmosphere needs to say that spelling matters, so we do not encourage purely invented spelling. At the same time, we do not want students to be paralyzed or to write using less interesting words because they are afraid to make spelling mistakes. They have to feel unconstrained to get their ideas down first. Marking all their spelling errors will discourage them and will likely result in simpler narrations, which is the opposite of what we want. An appropriate ‘middle way’ includes the following:
- Consistent implementation of copywork and dictation: Students learn spelling patterns and have the opportunity to form the habit of visualizing words.
- Observation: Observing your students and their writing can suggest skills you need to focus on in upcoming copywork and dictation lessons.
- Teacher help: Students usually want to spell things correctly. If they ask how to spell a word, telling them or writing the word on a piece of scratch paper for them right then (rather than asking them to sound the word out or look it up) will help them keep their flow of writing. Stopping them to sound the word out or to look it up in the dictionary will interrupt this flow, and they may have difficulty getting it back.
- Gentle accountability: Having students very occasionally read their narrations aloud can help them find sentences that do not make sense or that are too long or fragmented, as well as give them an opportunity to find their own spelling errors. Allow time to fix them. This exercise is intended to serve as a gentle introduction to the idea of self-editing and the application of grammar lessons, so if a student is easily discouraged or overly focused on perfection, wait until self-editing skills are introduced in Grade 7.
- Patience: Learning to spell is a process. Students will make a lot of mistakes. You might pull out one or two common ones you notice to focus on in a copywork or dictation lesson and let the rest go. Their skills should grow steadily through Grades 4-6 and even into Grades 7-9. To track improvement, try comparing their written exam to one they wrote a year ago. As composition lessons become more formal starting in Grade 7, remember to focus on the point of the lesson. Unless the lesson targets editing and spelling revisions, don’t overwhelm the student with comments about spelling and grammar. Writing is a process, and it is important to let students focus on one aspect at a time.
Narrating Science Books (5 min.)
Narration Immersion (8 min.)
Join Nancy Kelly in an immersion lesson with the book Fifty Famous Stories Retold.
Eight Common Questions about Narration (20 min)
Reflection
Respond to the following in the comments or in your journal:
1) How would you describe narration to someone who didn't know what it was?
2) What new ideas did you learn that you want to implement with your students?
3) What are your greatest challenges when it comes to narration? Did you find some encouragement in those areas?
4) How can you be a better audience for your student and help them to think of narration as storytelling?
In Mason's Own Words
Read School Education, Ch.16 in its original text and/or in modern English.
“A child’s individuality plays about what he enjoys, and the story comes from his lips, not precisely as the author tells it, but with a certain spirit and coloring which express the narrator. A narration should be original as it comes from the child––that is, his own mind should have acted upon the matter it has received” (Home Education, p.289).
“And the child will relate what he has heard point by point, though not word for word, and will add delightful original touches; what is more, he will relate the passage months later because he has visualised the scene and appropriated that bit of knowledge. If a passage be read more than once, he may become letter-perfect, but the spirit, the individuality has gone out of the exercise” (A Philosophy of Education, p.29).
“One thing at any rate we know with certainty, that no teaching, no information becomes knowledge to any of us until the individual mind has acted upon it, translated it, transformed, absorbed it, to reappear, like our bodily food, in forms of vitality” (A Philosophy of Education, p.240).
Further Reading
"Concerning 'Repeated Narration" by E Kitching, The Parents’ Review (1928), 39 (1), p. 58-62.
"Some Thoughts on Narration" by Helen E. Wix, The Parents’ Review (1957), 68(2), p. 61-63.
Narration and Retelling by Shannon R. Whiteside
