How to proceed after first draft of narration

[Kidlit]

After a lengthy absence from the WTM forums, I'm back for more inspiration and insight into moving with my eldest dd from the grammar to the logic stage.  She's a current fourth grader with a May birthday.  We've used WTM recommendations for almost everything, and PHP stuff for language in particular.  She is currently in WWE 4 week 12 or 13 (I'm not looking at my plan book right now).  We've (of course) gotten off track a little with SotW, so we're in chapter four of volume 3 instead of where we "should" be, which is volume 4.  I've had both my girls do narrations--sometimes oral and sometimes written.  After looking back through WTM yesterday, I decided that I need to require my eldest to write her history narrations each week, and I need to require longer narrations.  Today after she read chapter 4 section 1 in SotW 3, I specified that she write two paragraphs--one about Nobunaga and one about Hideyoshi.  Here's her first draft.  I've retained all her spellings and constructions:

 

Japan was under a civil war.  A man named Nobunaga wanted to reunit Japan.  Nobunaga aponted a man named Hideyoshi to be a sandle bearer.  When Nobunaga died four Samurai offerd to take care of Nobunagas grandson hoping to aquire the title for themselves.  

Hideyoshi planed to make his empire bigger by adding china to it.  But one thing stood in his way Korea.  So he sent a messege to Korea that said, "bow down."  But Korea just laughed.  So he tried to take Korea by force but it didn't work.  When China helped Korea they made Japan turn back.  Hideyoshi died befor he concord China.  

 

I congratulated her on a good two paragraphs (the second one begins "Hideyoshi planed") and suggested she include some sort of transitional information about how Hideyoshi came to power.  She then concluded her last paragraph with this sentence:

 

After Nobunaga died, Hideyoshi took his place.

Where do I go from here?  I know we could do a lot of superficial work on spelling, etc., but what about in terms of the actual writing?  How would you proceed?

[Kidlit]

Anybody?  Anybody?  Pretty please?   :huh:

[Ritsumei]

Ok, so this is not a new post. But, maybe it'll be useful to one or both of us to answer it anyway?

 

That's a hard question. Stinking hard, in fact. My boy is 2nd grade, so a little younger, but I find myself asking the same question: he narrated. Now what? It's a bit easier with someone else's kid though. If you were going to have her revise this (unlikely at this late date, but still, what if), then I'd say that the first this is, the narration is retelling the story, so it should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Her beginning is really choppy. I had to re-read several times to follow it. Perhaps help her combine some sentences:

 

"Japan was under a civil war.  A man named Nobunaga wanted to reunit Japan."

 

This might become--

 

"Nobunag wanted to end the civil war and reunite Japan."

 

Or --

 

"Japan was having a civil war, but Nobunaga wanted to end it and reunite the factions."

 

Something like that to make more clear the connection between these two thoughts. Also. A sandal-bearer sounds like a servant/slave. A bit about why that is important would make the rise of Hideyoshi to prominence make more sense. Again, things are choppy here. Maybe have her tell it to you verbally, and then transcribe/edit, using her spoken narrative, to make the essay flow more naturally.

 

Hope that helps. Hope it isn't too late to be even remotely useful! In any case, it's a useful exercise for me to think through this, so that I can figure out "Now what?" for my own boy, so thanks for posting!