macilustr8 Posted February 6, 2008 Share Posted February 6, 2008 Do you use your children's narrations as copywork/dictation for history or do you use other material to draw from for those? My DS is in second grade and I am using SOTW2. thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alana in Canada Posted February 6, 2008 Share Posted February 6, 2008 What is your purpose for copywork? We are using SoTW2 as well. I have the kids dictate a narration to me...and then each must copy his or hers out. For the seven year old, I use the notebooking paper created by a mom here....she can draw a picture and it's 1/2 lined so it helps her penmanship. I make my son do his because he needed the penmanship practice, too. At first he didn't want to do it....and they got nice and short (concise is probably a better word--and I helped him with that. ) From him I learned it really is a good idea for the child to copy it out himself--they don't want to include every little detail when they are forced to write it out themselves! So, I'd help him get them shorter...and we're back to about 1/2 page of my handwriting on a normally lined page. I was just re-reading about dictation--apparently at this age, I'm supposed to be dictating the first sentence back to him and then giving the rest to him to copy. That could be a bit tricky as I'm usually taking my daughter's dictation while he's copying (and she will "forget" if I stopped to do the dictation then.) He usually goes first--just because it helps her! But I could switch that when we do our narrations next time and I'll try the dictation with him. Sorry--I just realised your son is in Grade 2. At that age, dictation is one well written, well crafted sentence, (probably not their own) and preferably one they've been using for copywork for several days prior. Read the intro to SWB's new "writing" book. (On the PHP page. It's one of the sample pages). It helped clarify my thinking on it today. Sorry for the long reply! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
macilustr8 Posted February 6, 2008 Author Share Posted February 6, 2008 I am basically doing exactly what you are doing. I write down his narration and then he copies it and this week I am going to start dictating the first sentence and then have him copy the rest. I just sort of remember in the back of my mind that they are suppose to be copying from well written material, and to be honest, his narrations are not all that great. He keeps them pretty simple. We do other copywork from FLL2, copywork from literature we are reading once per week and a poem or scripture another day and then a definition or narration from what we are studying in science once per week. I was just interested in what others were doing, if the narrations were enough, even if it isn't the best writing. Amy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alana in Canada Posted February 6, 2008 Share Posted February 6, 2008 ah, interesting. You are doing a whole lot more narrating/writing than we are! Both the CM method and the classical (WTM) stress copywork in the early grammar stage--but it seems to me that CM extends it longer than one would with a method like WTM? Is copywork is essentially something from which a child "picks up" on sentence structure and so on in the CM method (where it may or may not be actively taught) but in the WTM method it is used as a teaching tool more explicitly? Do I understand that right? (or did I make that up?) So, how it is used and how often may depend somewhat on what method you've adopted and what you intend to accomplish with it. I'd be very interested in hearing about not only what you are doing, but also why. (Am I making sense? I had four hours of sleep last night and I'm really tired....just waiting for bed-time. (If I put the kiddos to bed too early the rascals just get up after a power nap of about an hour or so!) Just ignore me if I'm babbling, ok? Thanks.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sweetest Posted February 6, 2008 Share Posted February 6, 2008 What is your purpose for copywork? We are using SoTW2 as well. I have the kids dictate a narration to me...and then each must copy his or hers out. For the seven year old, I use the notebooking paper created by a mom here....she can draw a picture and it's 1/2 lined so it helps her penmanship. I make my son do his because he needed the penmanship practice, too. At first he didn't want to do it....and they got nice and short (concise is probably a better word--and I helped him with that. ) From him I learned it really is a good idea for the child to copy it out himself--they don't want to include every little detail when they are forced to write it out themselves! So, I'd help him get them shorter...and we're back to about 1/2 page of my handwriting on a normally lined page. I was just re-reading about dictation--apparently at this age, I'm supposed to be dictating the first sentence back to him and then giving the rest to him to copy. That could be a bit tricky as I'm usually taking my daughter's dictation while he's copying (and she will "forget" if I stopped to do the dictation then.) He usually goes first--just because it helps her! But I could switch that when we do our narrations next time and I'll try the dictation with him. Sorry--I just realised your son is in Grade 2. At that age, dictation is one well written, well crafted sentence, (probably not their own) and preferably one they've been using for copywork for several days prior. Read the intro to SWB's new "writing" book. (On the PHP page. It's one of the sample pages). It helped clarify my thinking on it today. Sorry for the long reply! I have been using quotes and proverbs for copywork and simple sentances from children's books for dictation. I don't usually write down the narrations for history because they are so long. I never considered that if my daughter had to write down what she was telling me she would be much more concise. She likes to give me every detail, and I have been trying to figure out how to get her to edit. Wow, that is quite a revelation for me! We will be writing and copying tommorows narration and hopefully she will make the connection quickly :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LindaOz Posted February 6, 2008 Share Posted February 6, 2008 Do you use your children's narrations as copywork/dictation for history or do you use other material to draw from for those? We do history copywork direct from the book. My aim is to have my kids writing quality material with good sentence structure etc. I guess it really would depend on your purpose for doing copywork. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris in VA Posted February 6, 2008 Share Posted February 6, 2008 If you would like to see my daughter's narrations in history, there are some examples on my blog. She has learned to be concise, too, and I'm noticing she is getting better at sequencing events. She narrates, I write on the white board, and then, occasionally, we edit. Then she copies it down on the lined paper you will see if you visit. I just thought it might be helpful to see some examples--I'm not saying we're perfect or whatever! lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alana in Canada Posted February 6, 2008 Share Posted February 6, 2008 Glad I could help! Jennifer--be sure to be gentle. The kids can be very attached to all those details! (After all, we've been proud of them for so long catching every detail and listening so well, lol!) Take it a couple of sentences at a time: don't be afraid to suggest the "shortening" bits to her. Write it out double spaced so you can mark your copy with a red pencil--and shorten right on the page where she can "see" it. What I did, though, was all oral. So, I don't have any examples. But he'd start going on and on and before I'd start writing, I'd say, "Are you sure you want to say all that? That's an awful lot to write out. What about...." or"Is that really important to the story? What's this story about, in one sentence?" Of course he couldn't do one--but he did whip it down to about three. This is me editing orally as we go: The Celts In Britain, there was a tribe called the Celts. They had bards who memorized songs, passed it down and sang them. [i should have stopped him right here.] One of their stories is about a man named Craith. He went to the end of the world with three friends. One had super hearing, one had super speed and one had super sight. [looking back we could have easily summarized this too! Probably something like: Each of them had a super power.] They went to the giant. He proposed a test. [i remember distinctly he was about to launch into the whole thing when I stopped him and asked: did they pass the test?] They passed it. Then Craith married the princess. Craith and his friends won every battle they fought. That was from a few months ago. This process took a long time-- months. And, admittedly, some maturity on his part. Good luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
macilustr8 Posted February 6, 2008 Author Share Posted February 6, 2008 Thank you ladies, you all gave me some things to think about. I like the idea of having him copy from the SOTW book. My main goal is to have him see/copy well written work and I haven't been doing as much of that as I wanted. Just needed to see what others were doing.... thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sweetest Posted February 6, 2008 Share Posted February 6, 2008 Thank you so much for all your help. Sometimes I do ask her "is that really important to the story?" and of course to her it is...but I'm thinking if I asked her "Are you sure you really want to write that all down?" she might be able to get to the point more quickly. I also feel like I shouldn't be interrupting her...but you make me realize that maybe I should let that go :) Thanks again! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alana in Canada Posted February 6, 2008 Share Posted February 6, 2008 Well, we did the dictation for the first sentence of my son's narration today. I posted how it went on the blog. I also pulled out some sentences from "Aesop" this morning for copywork and had the kids find the commas and periods. And I asked them how many sentences there were. They are still counting commas as periods! But they easily saw they'd counted wrong when I pointed out the lack of caps after the commas. Thanks for this discussion--we've gotten a lot out of it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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