SOTW, Narration, Multi Level

[Taryn Schnugh]

Hello everyone,

 

So I am sitting here, all red-faced (literally) and frustrated!  I have a 9 year old son, 7 and nearly 6 year old daughters. We have been using SOTW for the last two and a bit years. We are on SOTW3. We use the activity book and a free lap book.

 

So here is the problem.

 

According to The Well Trained Mind, my DS should be writing his own narrations (he isn't), my DD7 should be writing most of hers (she isn't) and I should be in the process of teaching my DD6 how to narrate. Now, I am either a total failure as a teacher (most likely, I really feel like my kids don't have the skills) or my kids are lazy (We know that Mom will give the answers if we just shrug our shoulders and say "I don't know" -My husbands take on the situation).

 

I need some sort of action plan. I feel like I have been spoon feeding the older two a lot and I haven't actually taught them the narration skill. Obviously, I don't want to perpetuate this with the next two. They can narrate for the most part, but they really struggle with the writing it down part. When they use the Institute of Excellence in Writing method, their narrations (self written) are beautiful and impressive. Can I use this method while we are reading SOTW? Can I tell them to choose three words from the important sentences as we go along, and then use those words to write their narrations? Or is that cheating?

 

Side note, my nearly 6 DD seems so confused and lost in SOTW3, she can hardly remember a thing, isn't able to answer the questions in the activity book and cannot do a narration at all! She can barely string a sentence together... Any suggestions for this side problem...

 

Ugh, I am so confused about narration, sometimes I feel like I get caught up in the 'shove knowledge down your throat' philosophy and forget I am actually supposed to be teaching them the nuts and bolts of learning...

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ethel Mertz]

Children progress at such different levels! I wouldn't worry too much about your older child not writing narrations yet. You can have him dictate his narration to you. Scaffold his narration skills until he can do it independently. One day he dictates his narration to you and then another day you can have him do copywork from his narration.

 

Also, I looked at the introduction to the Activity Guide for SOTW3. Volume 3 was written for grades 3-6, so your younger children aren't even at the developmental stage for this yet. Your 7 year old is fine doing oral narrations. Your child who is almost 6 should would be doing well just listening in to the lesson. You are not a failure and your kids are not lazy; they're just young!

 

From the Intro to the Activity Guide:

"Multilevel teaching The Story of the World series is intended for children in grades 1–4, but is often used by older students: Volume I is written primarily for grades 1–4; Volume II for grades 2–5; Volume III for grade 3–6."

 

In case you haven't seen SWB's updated recommendations, this might be helpful. Hopefully, others will see this and chime in with suggestions.

[hollyhock]

Go to Peace Hill Press and buy Susan's elementary grades writing lecture: http://peacehillpress.com/index.php?p=product&id=127

 

It will give you very good instructions on how to proceed. 

 

For what it's worth, your 9yo should possibly be in the process of learning how to write down his narrations, but keep in mind that that is the goal for the END of 4th grade. So if he's not quite there, don't sweat it, just work on it. Your 7yo can still dictate her narrations for you to write down, and as for your 6yo, I think I personally would have her narrate from some other source. Try a 1st grade reader (I use Pathway readers) or even a picture book. It doesn't have to be from SOTW.

 

I can't help with the IEW method, but if you get Susan's writing lecture, all the instructions and hints about narration are in there.

[Ethel Mertz]

Go to Peace Hill Press and buy Susan's elementary grades writing lecture: http://peacehillpress.com/index.php?p=product&id=127

 

 

 

I second Erin's suggestion. Susan's writing lectures should help a lot!

[RootAnn]

When they use the Institute of Excellence in Writing method, their narrations (self written) are beautiful and impressive. Can I use this method while we are reading SOTW? Can I tell them to choose three words from the important sentences as we go along, and then use those words to write their narrations? Or is that cheating?

 

If it works beautifully, try it with SOTW. Why not? There is no police standing over you telling you that you aren't allowed to do something that works well in one part of your homeschool in another part. Absolutely do it.

 

Side note, my nearly 6 DD seems so confused and lost in SOTW3, she can hardly remember a thing, isn't able to answer the questions in the activity book and cannot do a narration at all! She can barely string a sentence together... Any suggestions for this side problem...

 

 

I'll be honest that my youngers are tag alongs in history and it doesn't matter to me if they are doing proper narrations. (I don't ask them to do narrations of SOTW. They do narrations of much shorter material like the stuff in Writing With Ease 1.) SOTW3 has a LOT of material in each section. They admit that in more than one place by saying, "There is a lot of material in this chapter ..."

 

If you feel strongly that she needs to remember something from SOTW3 (remember, I don't mind because my youngers will go through SOTW again), just read the paragraph or few sentences of information you really want her to know again. Ask her what is going on in just that section. If she's still confused, explain it in your own words. Then, ask her again to tell you what's going on.

 

This takes a lot longer to do than what I want to take with the olders -- which is why we do it with WWE1 (or short Aesop fables or short narrative poems). You are asking your little DD to do a lot of tough things at once -- absorb a LOT of content, understand what's going on without necessarily much of the background that your other kids have had from SOTW1 & 2, and figure out how to do a narration.

 

BTW, my olders can't always answer the questions in the activity book. In fact, there are times that I can't answer specific questions from SOTW3 after reading a section because there is just so much information there. If I feel it is important, we go back through the book and reread the section again and talk about it.

 

If I know it is a tough section, sometimes we'll CHUNK the information -- stopping after each major event or person and talking about them. I've also been known to take notes as we go on the whiteboard behind us -- having my older kids reading aloud as we go & stopping them to summarize a section. My notes start to look like Level 2 outlines that you'll see in SOTW4. (For the record, my notes are much sloppier, more rambly, and much less concise than the ones provided in the SOTW4 activity guide.)

[Miss Tick]

I think that if you are using a separate writing program, successfully no less, that that supersedes some of the recommendation to write across the board. If they can narrate history reading, success! If they can write am occasional narration successfully using any method - even better! Not every subject has to be a challenge, rather you may want to focus on retaining general enthusiasm for history.

 

HTH!

[Peregrine]

This is what I started doing towards the end of this last year when I was doing book 1 with a 7yo and a 5yo: AT the end of each week I wrote important words or names from the SOTW chapter on our white board (for example, a chapter on Rome might include: Julius Caesar, et tu Brute, Latin, senate, Cincinnatus, Octavian, Agustus, July, August)  . Then I have the children take turns telling me something about each thing. I'd encourage using complete sentences and sometimes each child would want to add something to what the other would say. I plan to do this again next year and perhaps ask the older one (a strong 2nd grader) to pick one word and write down the sentence. I will probably ask the younger to pick one word and illustrate it. Maybe something like that could work for some of your kids?

 

 

[Targhee]

I really love TWTM and SOTW. I think SWB has been a catalyst for great things in homeschooling. Having said that, I think her written expectations for student output are reasonable only for a portion of students, those who have audio-sequential memory styles, who are analytic, concrete-sequential, and who have average to above average fine motor development. Now for the visual, global, abstract-random, fine motor delayed individuals out there it just won't come together the way she outlines it. That is very traditional for classical methods, but I believe that's one reason not everyone did well in school back in the day. Their learning styles were not compatible with instructional methods.

 

I highly recommend The Way They Learn by Tobias, and Discovering Your Child's Learning Dtule. Every child wants to be successful. Work with person in front of you, with patience and love.