Who writes your young child's narrations.....

[Once]

Anyone care to share what they expect from their dc from K - 4th grade with respect to written narrations. I'm especially curious about the physical act of writing out narrations when a child has a hard time with paper pencil work.

 

I vaguely remember a post with the progression through the grammar years. Something like this....

 

Kindergarten being only oral narrations.

1st grade is writen by mom.

2nd is writen by mom but copied by child.

ect.

 

But I cannot find it now. It was a helpful post but it cannot get to it again.

 

I'm curious what people do with their own children when their child has a difficult time with the act of writing.

 

Thanks to all of you!

[Alana in Canada]

1st grade is written by mom.

2nd is written by mom but copied by child.

3rd written by Mom and the first sentence and the the first two sentences dictated back to the child

4th. If you have been doing this for three years, I figure the child is able to do it on his own at this point.

 

And I figure the grades are just guidelines--if you need more time at each step or less, just take it. Sometimes, you need to write out dictations if the child starts making them too short in the later grades--and sometimes you need to hand him the pencil and say "You do it" if they are drowning in detail.

[LindaOz]

I have 3dc in that age bracket and they are all different.

 

My K'er is learning to give oral narrations, because that really is a good basis for developing into written. She, however, will sit down and write her own stories because she loves it. I don't require it though. I also have her do a bit of copywork and even started simple dictation the other day.

 

My 2nd grader gives oral narrations on readings, and sometimes I will have her write down what she has learned as well. It works well to have her draw or color a picture about the topic or story, then write about it. She probably does this about 2-3 times a week, a few sentences at a time. She also writes letters and stories.

 

My 4th grader has struggled more with writing. I have found through trial and error that the best thing for her is just to have consistent practice in both oral narrating and narration writing. Going easy on her because she having trouble really didn't solve the problem in our case. So, now she is reading Sign of the Beaver twice a week, then she writes a narration on each chapter as she reads it. She has a special book for writing these narrations so they are all together and it looks 'special'. She can decorate it with pictures etc. She also writes narrations on history and science topics as required. I work a lot on dictation with her which I find REALLY helpful for developing her writing skills.

 

Anyway, hth.

Linda:001_smile:

[Carol in Cal.]

For instance, when DD didn't like to write, but liked to compose (and was quite good at it), it would have been very counterproductive to force her to write down her narrations all the time. It would have made her compose less well so as to use shorter, more easily spelled words, and also she would have written much shorter and less complex narrations. So I kept the two skills separate for her. She had to do significant copywork, and I required her to write some sort of composition as well--but gave her several choices about what to write about. And, I would say things like, your composition must be at least 6 sentences long, and at least 1 of the sentences must be a complicated one.

 

IIRC, WTM follows the pattern that Alana suggested, but I did find that their suggestions were not as good for my creative writer as they might have been for someone who never had any impulse to write on their own.

[frogpond1]

4th/5th grade and we do narrations. With my 2nd and 3rd graders we read history and then talk about it and then I ask who, what, when and where questions and we write words (not sentences on the board). My 2nd graders then tell me personally the sentences they would like to write (individually) and I write their narration on paper and they copy. Two sentences is a great start for them. Later when they can compose two sentences alone and write it alone they seem to automatically move to doing more. My 3rd graders look at the words on the board - mostly for spelling sake and write their sentences about what we studied. I will write any word on the board that they need so they aren't worried about spelling, but they do spell correctly. With my 4th-5th graders I also ask the questions and write the proper nouns down on the board just to help with spelling, but as the year progresses they are able to do it all on their own. (If these 4th-5th graders had been with me since 2nd I they would be pretty much completely independent.

[Once]

Thanks ladies for all your great replies. I needed to find some perspective.

[Jennefer@SSA]

For instance, when DD didn't like to write, but liked to compose (and was quite good at it), it would have been very counterproductive to force her to write down her narrations all the time. It would have made her compose less well so as to use shorter, more easily spelled words, and also she would have written much shorter and less complex narrations. So I kept the two skills separate for her. She had to do significant copywork.

 

This is almost exactly what I was going to write! :) I still write Ds7's narrations down for him. He is the age of a typical 2nd grader but doing 3rd grade work in most areas. We do the narrations together on the white board and I copy it onto his narration page while he completes a copywork assignment. Then he illustrates his narration and we file them both away in his history notebook. We do copywork in several subjects so I am great the amount of writing he does. I want to keep writing and narrating separate just awhile longer.