What can I have 7.5 ds write instead of a 3-sentence narration for history?

[Peplophoros]

So, we have been working on our history notebooks for a couple of years (picture on the top, 1-2 sentences on the bottom). I've been testing the waters with narration a bit (we used to do "what's one thing your remember about this chapter") by having him summarize the whole chapter in 3 sentences. Lately he dreads this, and I think I might be jumping the gun a bit, since we're only now just starting to do this in WWE2 (and for passages that are not as long).

 

So, how can I mix it up? The "one think you remember" assignment seems to easy for him, but the whole narration is too hard, and since we're working on narration in WWE2, I don't want to kill his (pretty intense) love for history. Suggestions?

[PeterPan]

Did you want longer narrations or summaries? They're two different things. You could encourage him toward longer narrations without making it turn into a summary. He could pick just a portion of the text to relate. (just the end, a favorite scene, whatever). Remember two you can bust things out and do narrations other ways. Puppet shows (written or acted on the fly) are narrations. Comics, recipes, captain's logs, lego stop motion videos, etc. etc. You can make little graphic organizers where the pages let him write one sentence on each page and thus think through the beginning, middle, and end. There's a cute one you can use for book summaries called a hamburger organizer. Mrs. Renz's website has it.

[Holly]

I love the ideas here: http://simplycharlot...vers/narration/

 

I keep a printed copy handy!

[twoxcell]

At that age I would stick to oral narration. It is important to build up their narrating skills before jumping into written narrations.

[Lara in Colo]

For my son (who is the same age), we do the narration together, then I write the narration on the board (we keep it simple-- 1-2 sentences) and he copies the sentence on his paper (we started doing this twice a week about week 25 of WWE1).

[Dahliarw]

I've been transitioning into helping my son summarize in his narrations. I ask leading questions to help him isolate the big pictures, then tell him to tell me what important things happened and then what the result was.

[Chris in VA]

In second grade, I often asked dd for an oral narration (sometimes using the questions in the AG for clarification), then wrote it on the white board as copywork, all tidied up and grammatically correct. I wanted to hear her original thoughts, and also provide a good model.

After several weeks, I just wrote down what she said and she copied it for her notebook page. I noticed her written organization skills improved.

[Farrar]

Why not just three things you can remember instead of one? Just build up.

[Peplophoros]

Thanks, ladies. He is great at summaries, so I think I'll write them down for him and he can copy. I never really understood why this is easier than just going and writing them down himself (without me doing it first), but it's like night and day for my ds!

[PeterPan]

Summaries are developmentally challenging, so to summarize AND get it onto paper at this stage is doing many things at once. That's exactly right to break them up. He'll probably take over himself in short order. Sounds like a bright cookie! :)

[Starr]

We did a picture with mom writing the child's one oral sentence, child writing one sentence, to longer oral narrations that mom wrote then child wrote part-mom wrote part and on we went until dc was able to write 3-6 sentences themselves. There is the skill to distill important information and the skill to write. They don't always come at the same time.