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Can someone please tell me how you do written narrations at this level? My daughter tends to be lazy about this if I don't stay right on top of her. I have read the wonderful narration tips in the appendix. I'm wondering if they should do a rough draft on notebook paper first or write directly in their history notebook? It seems like this will make editing diffiult but yet getting my daughter to write it twice in one day might be torture. I'm working on attitude and good work ethic as well, but would like to have a system of doing this each time so she's knows exactly what to expect. Any tips or encouragement would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Elizabeth

Few suggestions: First-my son uses erasable pens so editing is no problem. Frixion seems to be a good kind. Second-he writes his narration on notebook paper and then when it is approved by me he will glue the paper onto the box in the student pages. Sometimes it is half a sheet and will fit but if it is longer just glue the top half to the box and fold up the bottom half of the page (or visa versa). As far as the content, what I do is have my son pick a specific topic from the reading that he wants to write about. From that he creates a topic sentence and the rest just supports it.

At this age, you can just have them do the best they can, and work on getting better. Don't try to make the notebook into this awesome showpiece portfolio of their best work. Not that you don't expect best effort. But, as they are getting better with written narration, don't get upset if they have misspellings or weird sentences. Remember, the point of the narration is not that it be a final draft of a perfect piece of writing. It is a work to help them organize their ideas and make connections with what they've read. They will get better at it, the more they try.

You can have them glue another sheet of paper into the notebook, but you don't want to force the child to write something over and over again until you have something "notebook worthy".

Yes, I agree with Motherjoy. The written narration does not have to be perfect before going into the notebook. You will start seeing that your child is getting the idea of just writing out something similar to an oral narration. You can use it to guide the child through his/her grammar or spelling errors if you want but the main idea, I believe, for this exercise is the content. Is the child able to put on paper a "retelling" of what was just read?

Thanks so much for sharing your advice! That really helped to hear how others are doing it. Thank you for taking the time to respond!
Elizabeth