Science narrations

[farmfamily]

Does anyone else find that their kids struggle with science narrations? Both my girls are great with history/storytime narrations, but seem to remember much less when it comes to science. I liked my daughter in ctc to at least remember the bold words in her Land Animals Apologia book, and she seems incapable of it. My older one in rev to rev does a fabulous job narrating life details of the inventors but has no idea about the things they invented or discoveries they made. I haven't had time to oversee her much with Exploration Education physical science. It looks great but I am way too busy with the other 2 all day to spend much time on it with her. When I asked her some questions about things she had learned she didn't seem to have retained much (ie she couldn't remember what inertia or velocity were). Is this normal?

[rumkimom]

My daughter is just the opposite....she can do the science ones with much more ease than history ones.....she is much more interested in science than history so I think that is the reason why.

[faroutback]

I think it is what they are most interested in when they read or we read to them. Your child must be interested in the people side of the stories which would match up with the like of history or maybe the like of history causes the focus on the people of science and where they fit in. It is interesting sometimes my children bring out things in the narration so that I totally missed because I focused on something else. I know we are not supposed to ask questions during the narration but sometimes after I want to know more ( and they have gotten used to me because I ask everybody questions so they think nothing of it) so I ask other things about what they narrated about. Sometimes I see this help them connect things and sometimes they have been curious and will go back to find the answer and sometimes they tell me the text didn't go over that only to have them tell me on another day the answer because they covered it then. I agree they tend to give us what they focused on even when it wasn't what we expected. As they cover the same people again through school in more detail they are likely to get those other pieces we expect.

[my3sons]

This is a really good question! It is true kiddos will connect more with certain subject areas, probably due to God's unique design for them. Gifts and talents do begin to show themselves as our kiddos grow and mature! Charlotte Mason understood this, which is why she stressed that each child's narration should be different than the next child's narration, as the goal was for each to 'sift and sort through information' without having specific points that must be shared. I used to do the same thing you are describing with my oldest son, when he was first narrating. I wanted a 'powerpoint' type presentation of the main points sequenced in proper order with all important terminology included. Reading more about Charlotte Mason's methods, as well as having lengthy discussions with my dear sister Carrie helped me understand that I was putting an unintended burden on my son to narrate one 'right way' and include the points/words/etc. I wanted included, rather than the points/words/connections he wanted included. In short, I was squelching his love for responding to what he read because he was always trying to give the elusive oral/written narration that included the exact things I wanted included. Once I stopped making orally narrating a pressure situation, my son began to blossom, and now as an 11th grader, he can narrate on virtually any topic with ease. Carrie has some excellent thoughts on this topic from a previous post I'll paste here...

Written and oral narrations CM-style look very different from child to child. This is different than written narrations done classical style, which result in more of a summary (meaning most kiddos' narrations will look very similar when done summary-style). These are two different types of narrations. One is a summary, with certain key points being required. The other is a true written narration CM-style, where the child sifts and sorts through information, choosing what to write about and borrowing words and phrases from the author to write in the author's style (without having certain key points that MUST be included for the narrations to be "correct").

In this way, a classical style summary can have a specific answer key. A CM-style written narration wouldn't even know where to begin with an "answer key", as each child will draw out or seize upon different points to express within the narration. This is why in HOD's guides, we may ask leading questions to get the child thinking about what he/she read, but we leave the sifting and sorting up to the child as far as what to write and how to write it. The key idea within our guides on written narration days will provide you as the parent with a summary of the reading, so you can see if your child is on-topic in his/her narration, but it is not intended that the child include all those points in the key idea within the narration.

We do have children practice orally narrating in both summary style and descriptive style in our upper HOD guides, because it is important to have a balance of both styles of narrating. But it is important to understand the two different styles of narrating, as there is much more to narrating than simply summarizing what was read. Otherwise narrating in general can quickly become an exercise in outlining key points and will lose much of what makes CM-style narrating meaningful.

Since summarizing lends itself well to outlining, and these skills are both important, we teach these areas through Rod and Staff English in conjunction with science or history passages that are more factual. This is because a summary lends itself well to being written from just a portion of a book, while a written narration is instead intended to pull from a more continuous ongoing story, rather than just an excerpt. So, we tend to use ongoing books for written narration practice.

This is because the knowledge gained as the child continues reading the same book, provides insights that can then be drawn upon and pulled together as connections when writing the narration. This process requires a different set of skills than those required to write a summary from a passage plucked from a source, where the goal is a summation of the key points in the particular excerpt or passage instead. We delineate that summarizing and narrating are two different skills with two different styles. It is important to note that narrating CM-style is a very different skill from summarizing or outlining. I do skim the text as my child is orally narrating to me, holding the book in hand. This helps me see if the child is including ideas, names, places, etc. from the text, but it also shows me that the connections are those which the child has made!

It helps me to remind myself of these guidelines by referring to the editing helps Carrie has included in the Appendix from time to time. They remind me of the goals of narrating, and of my role and my dc's roles within the oral narration. I think if you remove the pressure of your dd having to orally narrate using all/most of the science terminology (of which there is a fair share - give it a try - seriously - without studying it like one was studying for a quiz, I think it would be tough!), you can both start enjoying narrating more. You can compliment her on what she is doing well and then encourage her to use some of the terminology, as it fits with what she wants to share. This will probably have the effect it did on my son, which was to help him loosen up and share more, which in turn helped him better connect with what he was reading and ultimately remember it better. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

[farmfamily]

Thank you all for your replies. You are reminding me to relax and not stress about exactly what is included in the narration as long as the child is making some connections. I have been guilty of expecting certain things to be covered in the narrations when I shouldn't. I think I do this more when the texts are more "textbooky" with key points that an author is trying to convey.

We are done with the Apologia book now and having a much better time with Birds of the Air. Since it is not "textbooky" I think it is easier for my daughter to narrate from and easier for me to accept what points she finds important without thinking she is leaving out critical information.

However I still am left wondering how much actual "science" my girls are learning. I get the feeling that if the books get remotely technical, they just skim past and don't really even try to understand, when really those parts should require a more close and careful read.

Also another thing: what do you do if your child gives wrong information in a narration? Should you interrupt to correct it?

One last question: what do you do if you are reviewing a lab sheet after the fact and discover that your child didn't do a lab correctly? Do you make them redo it?

I will read again what you wrote about Charlotte Mason's ideas. I think I will have to soak up some of that philosophy some more. My local friends are mostly involved with Classical Conversations and they are all about memorizing facts to cover science. I know that is not my philosophy, but I guess I still have to think some more about what I am actually trying to accomplish with our science studies.