USII High School:
Wyatt has been doing 5 days worth of plans since the start of this school year, as we generally go 'all in' the first part of the school year. This allows us to take off time as needed around Christmas and in the spring, which are busier times for our family and for our jobs. Wyatt has been studying Women's Suffrage, the Roaring Twenties, Prohibition, and the UNIA and the NAACP. His talking points oral narration was on women's suffrage this week. There are suggested headings provided in the USII Heart of Dakota guide's plans. To prepare for this oral narration, Wyatt lists his headings on an index card to plan his oral narration, and he also figures out how to incorporate the visual aid that is part of his USII full color notebook. Usually the visual aid is a political cartoon that was famous. We sit together in the addition, me in my comfy chair with the USII guide propped open and the USII history book he read open to the start of his reading, and him on the day bed across from me with his index card and his visual aid in hand. I like to check off the headings in the USII plans that I hear him include as he orally narrates. I also skim the book he read as he narrates, which helps me know what's going on without having to read the entire book myself. I also listen for his incorporation of the visual aid, but mainly, I am just listening quite enthralled with how interesting history really can be when taught this way!!!
He has come into his own style of orally narrating, and he really is fun to listen to! He loves history, and with all of the background he has from reading all the awesome Charlotte Mason style living books he has from the past years, he sounds as if he almost personally knows these people from history, or as if he really was at the historical event he's sharing. All of those years of fledgling narrations, stumbling over words now and then, losing the main point here and there, mispronouncing names, and forgetting places... so worth the culmination of becoming a the good, strong, interesting, engaging, confident oral narrator he is today! Narration is worth sticking with until it's good. And it does become 'good' - better and better, bit by bit, until one day you wake up and you have a pretty articulate 12th grader that can knock your socks off with his storytelling!
I remind myself of this each day I work with our younger 2 sons on narrating. The finish is worth the journey. Here are some of his USII History Notebook entries from this week...
He has really been enjoying his living library book "Miles to Go for Freedom", and here are some of his triple journal entries from his readings this week...
R & S English 8 continues to clearly and systematically teach Wyatt strong language arts skills in grammar and in step-by-step writing. It's not flashy - but then he'd be on overload if every single school subject was made to be flashy. This is hands down the best English program I've seen! It gets the job done!
In Christ,
Julie
