Examples of first grade narration?

[mskelly]

Hi everyone. I'm in the planning stages for first grade right now. Kindergarten was just sort of a go with the flow year for us. I'm looking for a little more structure in first and I just found the WTM book. I've read it, reread it, and then gone back to reread sections again! I love what I have read and I'm so excited to start implementing it all. Now, I think I have all of my ducks in a row, but I'd love to see some examples of narration from first graders. I'm especially interested in narrations that go along with SOTW, but will take anything right now. :001_huh: Anyone have a blog to share or samples of work?

 

Thanks! I'm learning so much from lurking on these boards. I can only imagine how much I'd learn if I came out of hiding more often. :001_smile:

[black_midori]

By narration - are you talking about the sentence that the child gives back to us as a "what do you remember about this passage?" answer? My 5yo had a good one right off the bat today in WWE1!! :) The passage was an excerpt from Mary Poppins where she is giving medicine to all the kids, and his narration sentence was:

 

"Mary Poppins gave medicine to everyone."

 

Which I thought pretty much nailed it. :)

[FairProspects]

By narration - are you talking about the sentence that the child gives back to us as a "what do you remember about this passage?" answer? My 5yo had a good one right off the bat today in WWE1!! :) The passage was an excerpt from Mary Poppins where she is giving medicine to all the kids, and his narration sentence was:

 

"Mary Poppins gave medicine to everyone."

 

Which I thought pretty much nailed it. :)

 

Ooh, I can do that same one for a comparison! Ds is 6.75, just for reference. His narration was:

 

"Michael's medicine tasted like strawberry ice."

 

I was pleased since the grammar reinforcement for this lesson was capitalization of proper nouns. :)

 

Narrations from SOTW are much harder for ds and take much more coaching because the passages are so much longer than WWE (entire chapter versus a few paragraphs). I'm not sure ours would be representative since I really coach and re-word those puppies at this point in order to get complete sentences. I'm expecting that to improve the longer we continue to work on narration with SOTW.

Edited June 19, 2011 by FairProspects

[mskelly]

OK. That doesn't sound too hard! I don't have WWE yet. That should be here this week though.

 

SOTW does seem more challenging. Are your summaries about a paragraph or just one sentence? Would it be appropriate to use different types of graphic organizers (webs, charts, etc.) to help with summaries or are they always written out in sentences? Am I making this much harder than it needs to be? That's what I usually do!

[FairProspects]

SOTW does seem more challenging. Are your summaries about a paragraph or just one sentence? Would it be appropriate to use different types of graphic organizers (webs, charts, etc.) to help with summaries or are they always written out in sentences? Am I making this much harder than it needs to be? That's what I usually do!

 

The point is to have them be in complete sentences so that the child is hearing and using proper language. I think a graphic organizer might defeat the purpose since you are trying to get the child to think in language.

 

As for length, it depends on if there is a myth or legend in the chapter. If there is, I try to have him summarize the story in 3-4 sentences. If not, I ask ds for one or two things that he remembers from the passage. Usually I end up getting something non-related to the main point, but of high interest to a little boy like:

 

"The Phonecians made purple dye from snails. It was really stinky."

 

Ugh, at least he remembers something, even if it is only the gross stuff from history!

[peacefully]

.

[Milknhoney]

We just finished SOTW1 a month ago. Taking narrations was definately one of the more challenging parts of the year. A couple of realizations made things a lot easier for me: first of all, even though the AG coaches you to try to get a summary, the skill of being able to summarize isn't tackled in WWE until level 2. So I scrapped that and just let him say whatever he wanted to. We will worry about summaries after he digests that concept in WWE this year. Second, instead of reading the whole chapter and then asking him to tell me about it, we stopped after every paragraph or two and talked about it. It was much easier for him to give me a narration after that. It also helped to have him pre-read the chapter while I took my shower. Then when we read it together he was getting it a second time, which helped his comprehension. Just remember, while retelling a story is second nature to us, this is actually a skill that must be learned and developed. It is actually quite challenging. It took me a while to figure that out and hence many, many frustrated mornings when I thought my son was just being difficult.

 

I've already packed away his notebook of narrations so I can't leave a sample. For us, narrations started out just a few sentences long. They were longer if it was a story. By the end of the year, he had the knack of it down much better, and he also found Rome much more interesting than the other things we had studied, so those narrations were about a half page of notebook paper.

[boscopup]

We started narrations in January, halfway through first grade. Here are a few early ones:

 

"Archaeologists are people who discover things in the ground."

 

"Sargon killed the king, and he became the king of the city-state. He then conquered every city-state in Mesopotamia."

 

"Shamshi-Adad and Hammurabi told a fairy tale." (this is for "Gilgamesh")

 

He actually had some decent ones early on that were a couple sentences. Some weren't so great. Here are some recent narrations:

 

"Cyrus the Great was a nice king. He let the conquered people stay in their homes. He let the Jews go back to Palestine. He let the Medes have some power in his empire."

 

"Sparta had warrior kings. Spartan boys had to be brave and silent."

 

"Zeus started a horrible war down on earth. He gave a golden apple to his wife, and the goddess of war saw it. The goddess of love aw it also. They went to Paris, prince of Troy, and had him judge them."

 

"Athens and Sparta stopped fighting each other when they heard Persia was coming to attack them. When Persia attacked Greece at Marathon, the Athenians won, and they sent a runner back to Athens. He died of exhaustion. Persia lost the war."

 

Those last two were probably a tad long, but not horribly so. Some SOTW narrations ask for something specific, and those are usually our better narrations.

 

WWE narrations... Those are usually worse than SOTW narrations here. I know his first one was "There were no roads." That was the copywork sentence from the day before. :lol: His WWE narrations have gotten better than that, but WWE1 only asks for one thing you remember, not the main point. So it really can be anything. We've been doing so many narrations (we do at least 2 narrations per day) that he's ready for WWE2 style narrations, I think. We'll start WWE2 in 6 weeks.

[mskelly]

Thank you! This has been very helpful. My Activity Guide is coming this week also so maybe that will help also. I didn't realize there were prompts for the narration in there. I thought it was more of an open-ended thing where every time you read a chapter you ask the child, "What did you learn?" Of course, it would be more specific for the little guys so you don't get an answer of, "Nothing!" every time.:001_smile:

 

Are you interested in only WTM-style narrations?

My plan is to start doing it the way the WTM suggests, but tweak if needed. My son hates writing so much, he will probably really enjoy having me do the writing for him!

[~Kirsten~]

Thank you! This has been very helpful. My Activity Guide is coming this week also so maybe that will help also. I didn't realize there were prompts for the narration in there. I thought it was more of an open-ended thing where every time you read a chapter you ask the child, "What did you learn?" Of course, it would be more specific for the little guys so you don't get an answer of, "Nothing!" every time.:001_smile:

 

Are you interested in only WTM-style narrations?

My plan is to start doing it the way the WTM suggests, but tweak if needed. My son hates writing so much, he will probably really enjoy having me do the writing for him!

 

Each section of SotW has review questions. We read the section, I ask her the review questions, and then I ask for a narration. For SotW 1, I simply prompted with either "What was your favorite part?" or "What do you remember most?" Most of her narrations were 3-4 sentences, but that's because she likes to talk a lot! :lol: We used WWE in a very similar way. I also had her tell Daddy over dinner about what she learned in history that day. Sometimes she didn't really remember much; other times she had a much better grasp of the story or the ideas after it percolated a bit.

 

For me, I didn't want to make it stressful as I want my daughter to love history. So if she didn't say much, that's what I wrote down. If she kept talking and talking, I sometimes abbreviated slightly, but I tried to write that down, too. She was always very proud to read together what she had told me.

 

Now, as we transitioned into WWE 2 and focused on finding the main idea, it was much harder for her, but that's just because she likes details. Now that we've started SotW 2, I'm applying the same principles (summarize main idea), and she does. not. like. it. :tongue_smilie: But she's getting used to it.

 

Anyway, all that said, I think if you keep it very low key for 1st/SotW 1, you'll both really enjoy it. There's time to transition into main ideas and summaries. Truly! Oh, and if you get a partial phrase answer instead of a full sentence, just rephrase it into a sentence for a while. Eventually, you can then give a gentle reminder: "Can you make it a complete sentence, please?"

 

HTH!

[black_midori]

My 5 yo has short sentences for his narration (like the one above) right now, but he LOVES to re-write them! His brother is in WWE2 and has to re-write, so J decided he had to as well :) His favorite part of the WWE is probably giving me the sentence to write down & then re-reading & re-writing it himself! Isn't it funny how different each child is??

[Classically Minded]

I started practicing narrations when my daughter was in K and this past year for 1st grade, she had no trouble giving them in reading, WWE1, science and history. It is programmed in her now and SOTW narrations are still the easiest for her to do but for some reason it is harder for her to do science narrations.

 

Here is one from last week from the SOTW 1:

 

Ch. 27 Romulus and Remus:

A wolf found and raised two babies. Then a shepherd found them and raised them as his sons. They built a city on seven hills and called it Rome.

 

Here are some of her earlier ones:

 

Ch. 7

The Babylonians need to obey the king. If the Babylonians don't obey some of the laws, they will be put to death.

 

Ch. 19

The Mycenaeans they made armor and they made chariots and they were the first ones Greece to make chariots for fighting.

 

Here is one from WWE1 Week 18:

 

He dropped a pinecone and it went on the other side.

 

HTH! :)

[nmoira]

My 6yo wants to make them longer, and with more exciting details: "But mum, I can make it better!"

[mskelly]

Absolutely! It helps tremendously actually. It isn't nearly as complex as I thought it was going to be.

 

Keep it simple...keep it fun!

[Jay3fer]

My 6-yo tends to overdo her narrations; I'm working on getting her to stop, because she'll say the same thing a few times a few different ways. Today's was better: we're just starting SOTW history, and here's what she "told back": "An archaeologist is a person who finds things in the ground from a long time ago, like houses, clay and wood. People find them and write down all about people from a long time ago and where they find it. They dig it up because that's their job - to dig stuff up and put it in museums."

Lots more narrations examples for other subjects - Science, weekly Bible portion, composers, etc, on my blog!

Here's a link to her first narration, last fall, for comparison.

[mskelly]

Thanks for sharing the comparisons. That really puts in perspective for me.

 

It's great to see the progress the kids make in such a short amount of time. I'm sure that really helps mom on the days you feel like you are just spinning your wheels.

[Irishmommy]

Here is my 5.5 yo's "Otter Report" after we read a book about otters:

 

Otters hunt at night. They eat fish, ducks, and eel. Whenever males and females are married, the male leaves tem alone for a little while. He comes back after the babies are born. He hunts for food for the mommy while she is with her baby cubs. I thought the cubs would jump into the water, but they slid into the water. Their mommy had to teach them how to catch fish. The otter's whiskers remind me of Addie because they are so tickley! People used to put poison in waters and made otters die. Otters are so, so, so cute!

 

I let her dictate it to me while I typed it out.

[ChrisB]

SOTW ch. 27 - The Rise of Rome

The Power of Rome – "The Romans got many ideas from Greece through the Etruscans. They learned how to paint, how to dress, about the Greek alphabet and the Greek gods."

 

I have her do a narration after each section within the chapter because the chapters are so long. She does much better remembering than if I read the whole chapter and ask for a narration. DD either has a hard time narrowing down her thoughts to the main points or not remembering much of anything.:D I usually ask her leading questions to help draw out some of the main points. She dictates the narration to me and I type it on the laptop.

 

For science narrations, I ask her to tell me three things that she remembers from what we've read.

[Classically Minded]

I have her do a narration after each section within the chapter because the chapters are so long.

 

We do this as well, that is also how the SOTW Activity Guide is set up. It has a chapter's Q&A, narration divided up by sections, so we stop and do the questions and narration and then go on and read the next section.

[ChrisB]

Narrations from SOTW are much harder for ds and take much more coaching because the passages are so much longer than WWE (entire chapter versus a few paragraphs). I'm not sure ours would be representative since I really coach and re-word those puppies at this point in order to get complete sentences. I'm expecting that to improve the longer we continue to work on narration with SOTW.

 

I will have to say that I also do a little coaching and re-wording for DD. She is able to do a better job now that we are getting to the end of SOTW1.

[kalanamak]

We stuck to dictation until kiddo was ready. First he could give me the topic, then he could repeat details without any digesting, then he could answer the questions, and finally narration. I think he was 7.5, and we were just starting WWE 2 when he "got" it. I still have to limit the number of sentences, and he's been very happy he can use semi-colons recently. :001_smile:

 

I suggest being VERY gentle in the beginning, and make sure comprehension and retention are there first. My perfection-inclined boy would not have liked failing at it.

[Ritsumei]

I usually ask her leading questions to help draw out some of the main points. She dictates the narration to me and I type it on the laptop.

 

For science narrations, I ask her to tell me three things that she remembers from what we've read.

 

:iagree:We do this too. We've been doing "practice" narrations as he finished up K, just from whatever storybook was close at hand. I was pretty unsure at first, but it's gotten a lot easier.

 

The first one we did was a picture book called "You Can Do It, Sam." Monkey said, "Sam takes the red bags all by himself to their friends." That was last November. A recent one from FLL 22's story "The Little Girl Who Wanted to be Dirty" went like this:

 

The girl had to have a bath. She said, "No, no! I want to be dirty!" She wished she was a pig in a pig-pen with mushy, swampy, swampy dirt. She had a very good dram. She dreamed about piggies. She played with them. When she woke up she said, "Oh, Mother, it was a good dream - it made me want to be clean!"

 

For our science narrations we'll look at whatever it is we're doing about our animal, and then I'll ask him to tell me 3 or 4 things he's learned. If he can't think of any (he sometimes tells me that:tongue_smilie:), then I'll ask for one, and do some leading questions after that. We recently did Great Blue Herons:

Great Blue Herons can get their food from anywhere. They at fish and other stuff like that. They use their beak to stab their prey. They live in colonies. Colonies are like one great big group of birds in lots of nests.

 

I think my all-time favorite narration that he's given me is the one of Jonah and the Whale last January:

 

A fish puked Jonah out. He went to Nineveh. He prophesied to the people. The Lord said, "Thank you very much."

 

I've got some others on my blog, plus I've been collecting how-to ideas when I run across them, and filing the links on the blog.

 

We're just starting to do the history readings from SOTW, and I think that these are going to be more challenging narrations at least at first: the passages are longer than what we've done before. I'd share the first one, but I can't put my hands on our stuff right now: we've got a thoroughly stirred house because of a "little" water issue we had last Friday. The water abatement people have 29 fans in our home...

Edited June 19, 2011 by Ritsumei
Didn't like how I formatted it...

[Jay3fer]

We stuck to dictation until kiddo was ready.

 

:iagree:I think this goes without saying: they shouldn't be writing it themselves at a 1st grade level. :-o

 

Just wanted to add that a good way to practice for narration is with chapter book reading.

 

Every time I finish a chapter (for example, our Little House book, or A Little Princess), I ask them (6yo dd and 3yo ds - and you'd be surprised what a 3yo picks up!) what happened in that chapter.

 

Sometimes, it's not much ("Laura and Mary waited for Pa and had lunch at the hotel."), but sometimes there are several events in a chapter. "Saying back" the chapter - just verbally - helps them keep the thread of the book until next time.

 

The next time, before we start reading, I ask what happened in the last chapter. Again, just 1-2 sentences, no pressure - either kid can say anything they want, and I cue them if necessary ("why was Laura talking the whole way on the train trip?" "because Mary was blind now")

 

That way, everybody knows what happened. It also helps me pick up on comprehension problems - dd6 missed the dog Jack dying in our current Little House book because she was too tired when we read it, and I didn't make her say it back because she was exhausted, but then the next time, she couldn't tell me what had happened and it turned out she'd missed several key passages... so we re-read them before continuing.

 

Just thought I'd add a bit more from experience.

 

ALSO, Wise/Bauer-style narration (as opposed to pure Charlotte Mason-style narration) as seen in FLL & SOTW seems to favour asking a few general comprehension questions first BEFORE asking the child to narrate. I thought I wouldn't like that... but it turns out, dd and I both love it. :hurray:

[boscopup]

:iagree:I think this goes without saying: they shouldn't be writing it themselves at a 1st grade level. :-o

 

Yes, my DS probably won't be ready to start writing some of his own narrations until at least end of 2nd grade, as SWB suggests in WTM anyway. We'll work on dictation this year, but narrations are still done orally (and I need to start typing them... My own dictation skills aren't that great, and I can't write that fast! :lol:).

 

ALSO, Wise/Bauer-style narration (as opposed to pure Charlotte Mason-style narration) as seen in FLL & SOTW seems to favour asking a few general comprehension questions first BEFORE asking the child to narrate. I thought I wouldn't like that... but it turns out, dd and I both love it. :hurray:

Yeah, DS loves doing narrations, and I think the questions have helped that love! In fact, I was thinking about going ahead and doing WWE2 with the instructor text before finishing the WWE1 workbook (I think he's ready), but he wanted to finish the WWE1 workbook because he really liked the narrations and the stories in it. :D So we're cruising through and just doing the narrations (we're doing copywork elsewhere). He's thrilled that he'll get to do a WWE narration everyday. Weird kid! This isn't what I expected from a writing-phobic math geek. :tongue_smilie:

[Rivka]

Here are a couple of SOTW 1 narration examples from my six-year-old. She is definitely not one who needs encouragement to expand her thoughts. :lol: I will often remind her not to include small details.

 

Chapter 13: The New Kingdom of Egypt

Hatshepsut's nephew was only a baby when her older brother died. She said she would rule until her nephew was old enough, but then she said she wanted to be the pharoah. She told the people to pretend she was a man. She ruled until her death.

 

Chapter 22: Sparta and Athens

In Sparta, almost every man had to be a soldier. They wanted people to be strong and brave. In Athens, people could vote on the laws and leaders. They thought it was important for boys to be educated.

[Ritsumei]

:iagree:I think this goes without saying: they shouldn't be writing it themselves at a 1st grade level. :-o

 

 

I agree, UNLESS they ask for it. Then, strike while the iron is hot & let them go go go!

 

I hadn't planned to ask Monkey to do his own writing for quite some time yet: he's a little young and hasn't got all the lowercase letters yet. But he started asking to do some of the writing. So, when he wants to he writes some. Usually only 2-3 words, as that's still a tremendous amount of work for him. And we talk about the rules: lowercase for most things, capitals at the beginning, period at the end, but if he's not comfortable with a lowercase letter I still let him do the big letter. We do a very small amount of copywork some of the time now as well, since he's showing interest, and it's the same thing: I tell him the rules, but at this point I don't enforce them. I want him to write first, and we'll work on writing well as we go along. I've been pleasantly surprised at how quickly that sort of laid-back approach is working. There is marked improvement in handwriting and also in conformity to those rules we discuss. As we progress in the Kumon book he's getting more comfortable with the small letters, and it's showing. He doesn't do the writing on every narration, and he doesn't do much even when he does, but when he wants to I always help him. And he wants to often enough that I will now often ask before the narration: "Are you doing some writing, or am I doing it all today?"

[peacefully]

My 6yo wants to make them longer, and with more exciting details: "But mum, I can make it better!"

 

My ds is like this exactly! :D