DS 3rd grade narration

[Haiku]

Ds turned 9 last month. He dictated and I wrote.

 

The passage I read:

 

Did humans evolve, too? Yes! Like all living things, modern humans evolved from earlier species. We had ancestors, and they had ancestors and so on, in an unbroken chain that stretches back billions of years to the dawn of microscopic life on the planet.

 

During the age of the dinosaurs, our ancestors were small furry creatures that looked a bit like badgers. When the dinosaurs were wiped out, these small mammals survived, adapted to many new environments and flourished. Some evolved into a group of mammals called primates, who were adapted for life in the trees.

 

Eventually, some of these ancient primates began to come down from the trees to seek food on the open plains of Africa. Three million years ago, these small apelike creatures walked on two legs on the African grasslands, looking about fearfully for predators such as leopards and giant eagles. They walked upright like modern humans, but their brains were only slightly larger than modern chimpanzee brains. They were smart, but not nearly as smart as they would become.

 

I then said to ds, "What do you remember about this passage?" These are the notes I took while he talked:

 

before dinosaurs, small mammals

after dinosaurs, primates from trees searching for food/looking out for predators

primate brains slightly bigger than chimps' brains

 

When he was done, I asked, "What is the first thing this passage talked about?" and he said, "Did we evolve, too? Yes," so I added that to the top of the notes.

 

Then I said, "Let's make each of these into a complete sentence."

 

Final product:

 

Humans evolved from primates. There were small mammals before the dinosaurs. After the dinosaurs, primates came from the trees to look for food on the open plains. They also were looking out for predators. The primates' brains were a bit bigger than the modern chimps' brains.

 

I have started taking notes and having ds work from the notes to formulate sentences because it's too hard for him to organize his thoughts straight into sentences. He tends to come out with long, meandering sentences that are syntactically incorrect. He does much better working from notes.

 

For the last sentence, I asked him what word we can use to indicate that something is "nowadays" and not "ancient," and he added to word "modern" to his sentence.

 

He could not, by the way, write this out on his own. At least not without it taking for.ever. He takes (short) dictation just fine, but his physical writing skills are still poor and although he could write this, sentence by sentence as he created the sentences, it would just take too long and fatigue him. Usually a few days after narration, I use it for copywork.

 

Ds does extremely well with narrations on fiction or history that has a narrative thread. He has a harder time on factual, non-fiction narrations. His still has trouble distinguishing the main points from the details in non-fiction, a problem he usually doesn't have with fiction.

 

Any thoughts on my process or his finished product?

 

Tara

[ErinE]

I think your process and the outcome were fine. I would have corrected the second sentence by asking, "Did the mammals come before the dinosaurs or were they around at the same time? What does the passage say?"

 

I started doing narrations with ds the same way.

[Amber in AUS]

Sounds like you've got a solid plan.

[thescrappyhomeschooler]

I like the idea of turning notes into complete sentences. I might have to steal your plan with our next narration and see how it goes. It sounds like it's working well for you and your son.

[Catherine]

I think your plan is fine. In a way, you are ahead of the game, because writing from notes is a more difficult skill, IMO, than just dictating out a long sentence.