April 9, 2025 • 54 mins
Karen Glass discusses the power of narration in education, sharing her journey from homeschooling mom to Charlotte Mason education expert and author of "Know and Tell: The Art of Narration."
• Narration is simply telling back what you've learned, a natural human activity we use to build relationships
• Charlotte Mason's educational philosophy centers on two key principles: "children are born persons" and "education is a science of relations"
• Narration develops multiple cognitive skills including comprehension, memory, ordering of thoughts, and communication
• The progression of narration moves from oral telling (ages 6-9) to written narration (10-12) to formal composition (junior high and high school)
• Narration can be applied to any subject and take many forms—oral, written, artistic, dramatic, or even through building models
• Children don't always enjoy narration, but it works effectively regardless, developing communication skills that serve students throughout life
• Special needs children can benefit from narration through alternative expressions like drawing, building, or dramatic play
• The mental processes involved in narration help students build connections between subjects and with their prior knowledge
About our guest
Karen Glass has been studying and learning about Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of education since 1994. She homeschooled her four children who are now all adult graduates, but her passion for this life-giving view of education has not diminished and she welcomes opportunities to share it with others. She has spoken at homeschool conferences, taught online classes, conducted teacher training at schools, and served as an adjunct professor to teach college-level classes. She is the author of several books based upon Charlotte Mason’s ideas, including Consider This, Know and Tell: The Art of Narration, In Vital Harmony, and most recently Much May Be Done with Sparrows. After living in Krakow, Poland for almost 25 years, she now lives in rural Indiana where she continues to read, learn, teach, and write.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
That whole telling thing is how we form friendships
, it's how we get to know people, it's how they get to know us.
And so when you bring it intoan academic setting and you say
I'm going to have you tell aboutthe things that you're learning
about, you kind of tap intothat natural relational process.
That's just part of who we areas persons.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hi and welcome to the Kindled podcast where we dig
into the art and science.
And welcome to the Kindledpodcast where we dig into the
art and science behind kindlingthe motivation, curiosity and
mental well-being of the younghumans in our lives.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Together, we'll discover practical tools and
strategies you can use to helpkids unlock their full potential
and become the strongestversion of their future selves.
So we're going to talk to KarenGlass.
(00:54):
She has been studying andlearning about Charlotte Mason's
philosophy of education since1994.
She homeschooled her fourchildren, who are now all adult
graduates.
But her passion for thislife-giving view of education
has not diminished and shewelcomes opportunities to share
it with others.
She has spoken at homeschoolconferences, taught online
classes, conducted teachertrainings at schools and served
(01:18):
as an adjunct professor to teachcollege-level classes.
She is also the author ofseveral books based upon
Charlotte Mason's ideas,including Consider this, know
and Tell, the Art of Narrationand Vital Harmony and, most
recently, much May Be Done withSparrows.
After living in Krakow, poland,for almost 25 years, she now
(01:40):
lives in rural Indiana, whereshe continues to read, learn,
teach and write.
Okay, let's go talk to Karen.
Karen, we are so excited tohave you on the Kindled podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Thank you for joining us Well thank you so much for
inviting me.
I'm really excited to kind ofmeet your new audience.
Yeah absolutely.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
We can't wait to introduce Charlotte Mason and
narration to our audience.
So can you start by sharing alittle bit about your journey
and education and what inspiredyou to write a book, and it's
called Know and Tell, which Ilove.
The name of that book, superfun, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Well, I started my educational journey when I
realized I was going to need tohomeschool my children.
My husband and I were planningto move overseas for ministry
and that's just kind of thedefault, like I was planning to
homeschool my children and I wasplanning to just use a normal
(02:39):
out of the box curriculumwithout giving it too much
thought.
But then I box curriculumwithout giving it too much
thought.
But then I, one of my kids werestill quite, quite small, like
three and nine months, I had theopportunity to go visit a
homeschool curriculum fair and Ithought, well, I'm going to
homeschool, so you know, I'lljust go see what they've got
there, even though I, just inthe back of my mind, I was
already defaulting, you know, tothis particular out of the box
(03:03):
curriculum.
While I was there, I wanderedaround and because I've always
liked to read like I've alwaysbeen a reader I was drawn to a
particular vendor in the cornerwho had just a lot of books,
like real books, interestingbooks that you'd want to read
and not just textbooks and whileI'm wandering around there with
my babies, you know, with mybabies.
(03:24):
He came up and handed me a copyof the book For the Children's
Sake by Susan Schaefer McCauley,which is kind of the gateway
for most people my age to.
Charlotte Mason handed me thecopy of the book and says you
need to read this book.
So I bought it, I took it home,still have it and read it and I
jokingly say well, thatcurriculum lost a customer
(03:44):
forever Because it completelyshifted my perspective on what
education is and what it's meantto do.
And so I went wholeheartedlyinto Charlotte Mason.
As soon as I finished readingthat book, I ordered her books
Charlotte Mason's six fatvolumes that she wrote about
education and just jumped rightin and started reading them.
(04:08):
And I have the same experiencethat most people do when they
first start reading CharlotteMason's own words it's a little
overwhelming.
It's a lot overwhelming and atthe time it was just kind of the
dawn of the internet and I wasable to go online via AOL.
There was no web or internetlike we know it today, but I
(04:28):
went online and I found otherpeople they're homeschoolers who
wanted to read and study, andso we started reading and
studying together.
By the time my oldest actuallywas of an age to begin school.
I'd had a couple of years ofreading and thinking about it
and I was just really committedto the concept of you know
Charlotte Mason's view ofeducation, which included
(04:49):
narration.
And I sometimes jokingly saythe world and myself we're all
very lucky that my oldest childwas a natural narrator.
Not all kids are, but he was anatural narrator and because of
that, uh, as I jumped in andstarted using it, I saw how
effective it was very quickly,which doesn't always happen with
(05:10):
a six-year-old.
It can take a little time for achild to grow into becoming a
fluent narrator, but because myoldest was a natural narrator,
he just showed me right away howeffective it was.
I I share a story in Know andTell where November of that
first year we read a book it wasAlice Dalgleish's story of
(05:31):
thanks, the Thanksgiving storyand age appropriate and we read
it and he narrated it which Iknow we haven't really talked
yet about what that is, but wewill and he read it and narrated
it for about over the course ofa week and a friend called me
at the end of the week and shehad a son a year older than mine
a year, you know, a gradehigher and she was a little
(05:53):
disappointed because he'd had awriting assignment about the
first Thanksgiving in hiscurriculum which is the same box
curriculum that I had decidednot to use and he was supposed
to write two sentences about thefirst Thanksgiving and he had
written the pilgrims are nice,the Indians are nice.
And she was a little bitdisappointed because it seemed a
little bit lackluster.
(06:13):
And so just after we werefinished with the conversation I
, out of curiosity, went back tomy son, who was six years old,
and I said what can you tell meabout the first Thanksgiving?
And he just told me the wholestory because we'd read that
book, he had narrated it, it wasfresh in his mind and he was
able to articulate all of theevents, including names and
(06:34):
specifics.
And if I didn't transcribe itbut if I had, it would have been
like a page and a half long andit gave me a vision very, very
early in the process of what adifference narration could make
in a child's education.
And I thought I want to seewhat's going to happen if we do
(06:55):
this all the way through.
So at the time it wasn't widelyCharlotte Mason wasn't widely
used beyond elementary agechildren and I didn't know
anybody who had used CharlotteMason's methods, but I was so
impressed by what narration haddone.
You know what a difference itwas making at that stage.
I really wanted to see it and Icommitted us to it.
(07:15):
I said we're going to do it allthe way through and see what
happens.
He was about 10 and we hadgotten into doing written
narrations as well as oral ones.
I remember thinking at the timeso this would have been about
2000 or so I could write a wholebook about this.
Like by then, I had had otherchildren, I'd seen other
(07:38):
families using narration, I'dhad the experience of we're
using narration with childrenwho weren't natural narrators
and and how that worked withthem, because he's the only one
of my kids who's a natural, justa natural narrator.
The others, you know, are kindof more typical, which means
they struggle and it takes alittle longer to to become
fluent.
(07:59):
And so by the time he was 10, Iremember thinking, oh, I could
write a whole book aboutnarration, which eventually I
did in 2018.
I think I published Know andTell.
Took you 18 years of seeing hownarration worked, like the
(08:23):
vision that I had at thebeginning.
Well, I didn't know what itwould look like, but I wanted to
see, and so because of that, Ipaid a lot of attention across
all of those years, not just tothe way narration was working
with my children, but the waythat other families who were
using it talked about it, and Iwas always watching.
And so eventually, thatexperience of paying attention I
(08:46):
was able to, you know,extrapolate basic ideas and
principles that would make itwork and try to make them as
practical as I could.
And so know and tell I'vewritten several books is the
only book that has anypretensions to be practical.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Yeah, the how I found ?
I found it was on Instagram andI don't even think I followed
the person.
She was in her car and she hadyour book.
And she was just like, even ifyou homeschool, you're an
educator, even if you don't useCharlotte Mason, you need to
read this book.
I was like, okay, what is thisbook all about?
And then, because we useCharlotte Mason and I don't have
(09:24):
a natural narrator, I becamereally fascinated about okay,
let's see how I can help him,because I see the value of
narration and I see the value ofthese living books that he
reads.
And so, anyways, that's how Istumbled upon your work.
And now here we are, getting tohear all about Charlotte Mason.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
So take us through Charlotte Mason a little bit
Like what are the basic tenets,like how is it different than
just like how we normally parentor educate what stands out to
you?
Speaker 1 (09:54):
One of the things that I think really makes
Charlotte Mason's approach toeducation distinctive is that
she asked some really importantquestions about education which,
if you look at the besteducators throughout history and
you look at what they weredoing, they usually ask these
same questions and they'rereally basic questions.
So, for example, what is a child?
(10:15):
What is this person that we'retrying to educate?
What is education?
What is it?
What are we trying to do Like,what is this process all about?
So you, you know, a lot of timesyou, you, you, we tend to, as
educators, jump into thisprocess asking questions like
you know, what curriculum do Ineed for math?
What, how do I teach phonics?
(10:36):
You know really specific, nittygritty, practical things.
But Charlotte Mason begins withthese really big questions and
then, once she answers them,what actually makes her kind of
a genius, I would say as aneducational philosopher, is that
, once she answered thosequestions with what she
(10:59):
considered to be principles,like undeniable principles about
what a child and what educationis I'll get to that in a second
she was able to create reallypractical methods while keeping
those principles in mind.
So all of her methods arerooted in those principles and
(11:21):
there's really now, if you pickup a book by Charlotte Mason,
there's going to be about 20principles listed at the front
of them, but there's only twothat are really central and all
the rest are kind of anchoredaround them and they are the
answer to those two questions.
So the first principle ischildren are born persons.
I mean, that's really reallybasic, really simple.
(11:44):
And of course some of the otherprinciples are to elaborate on
what she means by that and whatit means to be a person.
And then she answers the otherquestion what is education, by
saying education is a science ofrelations.
What she means by that is thata person has a natural
(12:05):
relationship with all differentareas of knowledge in the world,
and she kind of divides allknowledge, and this corresponds
to the sort of the medievalrealms of knowledge where they
had divine philosophy, moralphilosophy, natural philosophy.
She kind of breaks it up intothe same general categories of
knowledge of man, knowledge ofGod and knowledge of the world
(12:30):
or the universe, the physicaluniverse.
And so she says as persons weall have a right to develop a
relationship with all thesedifferent realms of knowledge,
different realms of knowledge.
And so she makes theeducational process about
helping a child not just learnand remember certain specific
(12:51):
information, but to actuallyhopefully begin to care.
That's what we think of interms of a relationship, that
it's more than just headknowledge, but it's a heart
response, it's caring.
She even says at one point thequestion isn't how much does the
youth know when he's finishedhis education, how much does he
care?
That's what she's saying.
(13:12):
It's all about therelationships.
And then all of those practicalthings that we do in the
Charlotte Mason educationalparadigm, including narration,
are relationship buildingactivities, because that's, you
know, she keeps those ideascentral, even on a, you know,
practical level.
That's awesome, that's helpful.
(13:34):
So hopefully that's good.
I know we could do a wholeepisode on this.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Yeah, and I love that .
The relationship.
It just isn't the relationshipbetween the adult and the child,
but it's the child'srelationship to the world and to
what they're learning.
I just think, right now we havebeans growing on our windowsill
and sometimes, you know, my sonis on the spectrum and so some
are autistic and sometimes, youknow, he gets very, very hyper
(14:04):
focused on something and it'sreally hard for him to form
relationships with other things.
And so he started school twoweeks ago, in the very first day
for science, instead of diving,we use Alviary.
And so instead of diving rightinto his science book, which I
think he's reading, the Girl whoDrew Butterflies, and he's
reading an Aristotle book, andso, instead of diving into that,
(14:25):
it just said to plant somebeans.
And it's so amazing to watchhis relationship with these
plants, and so it's not justabout, you know.
And then now he has startedreading the books that go along
with why he needs to plant thesebeans.
But it was really as you'retalking.
I'm like, yeah, he isdeveloping this really beautiful
(14:46):
relationship for things thatgrow.
And then he went into my binthat has I mean, we have lots of
seeds and he hasn't seemedinterested in at all, and he's
pulling them all out, and he'slooking at the cooling hours and
figuring out whenever we canstart growing things.
And this is just all justignited by planting a few, you
(15:06):
know beans, which is really cool.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Right.
So that is, you know, that'sthe underlying philosophy, and
it's why narration is such asuch such an important piece of
what people think of as aCharlotte Mason education,
because narration is arelationship building practice.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Yeah, so can you dive into that?
Like, what is narration?
You know a lot of people may beunfamiliar that we've been
saying the word a lot, so canyou tell us what it is?
And then, how does it differfrom other forms of learning
activities that you know?
Because this could again,narration could be used in a
traditional classroom as welland or in a homeschool
(15:50):
environment.
So like, how is that different?
And then also, just what is it?
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Right, okay, so narration is basically a natural
human activity.
It's the same thing as telling,just telling.
So I mean it's a natural partof our lives.
So you know, if your child goesto a brick and mortar school
and they come home and you say,well, what happened today?
(16:15):
Or you start telling them aboutwhat happened at home while
they were gone, you're narratingto each other.
You know, if you read a book orlisten to a great podcast or
watch a great movie and you, youknow, you go and start talking
to a friend or your spouse aboutit because you want them to
enter in and share yourenthusiasm for it, that's
narration, like it is the mostbasic kind of you know relating
(16:41):
to somebody else, usuallysomething, anything.
It's not you know.
You just, we just narrate aboutour lives and I said it's a
relationship building activityand when you think of that in
that context, you understandthat when you talk to other
people, that that's howrelationships form.
The more personal you tell themthings, the more personal the
(17:04):
relationship becomes.
But even if you're at adoctor's office, relating the
symptoms of your illness to yourdoctor, you're still narrating.
It's just a professionalrelationship.
But that whole telling thing ishow we form friendships.
It's how we get to know people,it's how they get to know us.
And so when you bring it intoan academic setting and you say
(17:27):
I'm going to have you tell aboutthe things that you're learning
about, you kind of tap intothat natural relational process.
That's just part of who we areas persons.
Again, it's related to thatprinciple.
You know of who we are aspersons.
Again, it's related to thatprinciple.
You know of who we are aspersons and the way that we
interact and relate with eachother and with other things.
So what it looks like if you'reusing narration in an academic
(17:53):
setting is that a teacher or aparent will read something to a
younger child, or a child isable to read for themselves, may
go ahead and read something andthen the child is invited to
tell it back in their own words.
So it's not like they need tomemorize it word for word and
retell it and building the habitof doing this.
(18:16):
This is one of the reasons itcould take a little longer.
In Charlotte Mason's world shesaid this is six, with this
formal request to say you know,here's some specific material
(18:44):
that I want you to narrate, andthe reason that she waited until
then is because when you arecalled upon to narrate
purposefully in that way somespecific material, there's a
huge amount of mental activitythat has to go into it.
But you have to understand whatwas heard, you have to remember
what was.
You know what was in thematerial.
You have to order it, you haveto find a beginning place and
(19:06):
then work your way through it insome kind of an orderly fashion
and then you have to formulatethe words and sentences you know
.
That will allow you to conveywhat it is that you've said.
It's much, much easier to tellyou know what you had for
breakfast or what happened atwork today than to retell.
You know a chapter in a bookthat you've read or some
(19:29):
specific you know maybe you werereading about.
You know a scientific principleabout some kind of animal.
It's more difficult to tellthat material and it requires
all of that mental activity.
So it takes time for a child.
Like I said, my son was anatural narrator.
He just he could.
(19:49):
And there are natural narratorsout there who just like yep,
that's no problem, let me tellyou all about it, and sometimes
their narrations will be longerthan the original material.
There are other kids who reallystruggle to do that.
But it doesn't mean thatnarration is less effective if
it doesn't come as naturally toa child as that for them,
(20:14):
because it's building theirmental skills.
You know, all of those, allthose habits of thinking.
Narration actually trains youto think in a particular way,
very, very different from theway that if you went to an
institutional school where youwere asked questions for
specific pieces of information,that trains that.
(20:36):
I mean, that's how I it waswhen I went to school, you know,
and we were told, even toldhe'll read the questions at the
end of the section.
Before you read the section,then you know what you're
looking for and you just skimfor answers.
It's a very different processand it teaches you to think in a
completely different way thanwhen you have to listen with
(20:56):
enough attention to be able toretell it in your own words.
So that's what narration lookslike, you know.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
It sounds like it leads to a deeper learning and
then also retention, would yousay that?
And then I'm thinking about wejust interviewed Peter Lillidall
.
Yeah, so he wrote a book calledBuilding Thinking Classrooms
and his book is focusing on math.
(21:25):
But he told us, you know, youcan't learn unless you think.
But he was going intoclassrooms like 400 classrooms
and noticing that kids were notthinking, they were just
mimicking or doing what theteacher was saying.
So what I'm hearing isnarrating really helps them
(21:46):
retain the information becausethey're having to, like you said
, there's so many cognitiveprocesses happening.
They have to really listen.
So that's building up a reallygood habit.
And then they have to, you know, spit it back out.
So I could imagine, if you'redoing this year after year, by
the time you're 18, that you area really good thinker and could
(22:07):
use those skills for otherthings, especially if you know.
You decide you know to go on tocollege or whatever that may be
.
And so Katie wrote a curriculumfor our micro schools and it's
called treasure hunt reading.
And so they had these littlestories like um, you know, they
have a letter and then she hasvideos that go along with it.
(22:27):
She's a venture K.
It's really cool.
And so my seven year old hasbeen doing these and so I have
been having him narrate theselittle stories back to me.
And it is amazing, from thefirst day that I had him retell
it to me, he gave me just a fewdetails, just kind of like the
pilgrims are nice, you know.
And then now we've been doingit for a couple of weeks and
(22:49):
he's even adding his own detailsto the story, because they're
really short stories.
But he's giving me details andthen he's adding other
adjectives and other words, andso it's really cool to see his
mind developing just by usingthese.
You know four or five sentencestories in this curriculum that
he's using, so you can reallyuse narration even if you're not
(23:11):
using Charlotte Mason.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
All right.
It's a method that can beapplied in, you know, the
classroom and homes, homeschools, in Sunday schools.
I mean just almost anyapplication where you've got
people adults or children, youknow in a learning situation.
It can be used in all of thosethings.
You know, in all of thosethings.
And we've talked aboutnarration, like because you know
(23:35):
, when you first start kind oftrying to understand what it is,
we talk about it this way wherethe telling is just orally
telling it back, but eventuallythat could become written
narration and it buildscommunication and writing skills
.
You know, from age six to 18,as you said, this is helping
children become bettercommunicators.
This is helping children becomebetter communicators.
(23:57):
I read an article in Forbesmagazine quite a few years ago
now and it was talking about thetop.
I don't remember the exactnumber, but like the top skills
that employers look for, likethese are the most things they
value the most, and nine-tenthsof them were accomplished
through narration because theywere all communication skills
(24:18):
and so you know, no matter whatour students you know are going
to do later in life, my son, mynatural communicator son, is now
34 years old and he's asheriff's deputy.
He's a Marine, is in the MarineReserves and he has told me on
multiple occasions situationswhere his narration, you know,
(24:39):
habits and his practice, hisability to speak, has impressed
people.
And he has to write.
You know he's a sheriff'sdeputy, so he has to write a
report of every interaction hehas with everybody, everywhere,
every day.
You know they have to makereports, and so there's his
narration skills prepared himfor that reports, and so there's
(25:00):
his narration skills preparedhim for that.
When he was, when he was intraining in the Marines, he had
to read dispatches and you'resupposed to summarize the orders
and retell them, because theyjust come in a bullet point form
but you have to explain them sothat everybody in the you know,
everybody in the groupunderstands.
And they just randomly picked acouple of people to demonstrate
what it might look like.
(25:20):
And so they randomly picked himand he did such an amazing job
that they took him, because, Imean, he was just a recruit at
the time.
They took him to the officer'sgroup where they were doing the
same sort of thing and had himdemonstrate it for them, because
his narration skills were justprepared him to do this thing
that they needed done.
And that's the thing aboutnarration.
(25:42):
It's just it helps to buildcommunication skills, both
orally and in writing,comprehension skills, like you
said, memory, if you think aboutin real life, um, if somebody
gives you directions or theytell you they want you to pick
up a couple of things at thestore or something, the very
first thing you do is you startrepeating it back, like
narrating it back to yourself,because that will help you
(26:04):
remember.
So, yes, you know, as you said,narration does play a role in
memory and it also because youhave to deal with all of your
knowledge, kind of as a whole.
It helps to make connections.
You're always makingconnections and remember,
education is a science ofrelations, in a Charlotte Mason
(26:25):
paradigm, and this kind ofactivity helps you connect the
things you're learning now withwhat you've already learned
before.
But it doesn't always have tobe oral.
That's what I actually wastrying to say.
You can narrate via drawing,drama, other art forms.
(26:45):
There's more than one way tonarrate.
Subject matter is whatever thelearning environment is.
You can provide different waysfor children to tell back what
they know.
One thing that we'll sometimessuggest is building models with
(27:08):
you know, with blocks, withLegos, you know.
Setting up a scene based onsomething that you read.
And I sometimes say to momsMinecraft narrations aren't
things.
I've seen amazing kids buildamazing things in Minecraft.
Here's the ejection pyramids,here's the city of London, and
that is a narration of a song.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
Yeah, I never thought of that.
It reminds me of play therapytoo.
They, you know, give you abunch of things and you have to
retell, like what's going on ormake sense of what's happening
in your life by using blocks orlittle figurines or something.
So it sounds very similar andconnected to that.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Right, and that's the thing.
Sometimes you might not evenrealize how things actually fit
under this umbrella of narration.
Any form in which a person cantell or show what they know is a
form of narration.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
I'm trying to imagine this happening in a classroom
right now, like, typically,classrooms are not places where
lots of kids talk.
You know you're supposed to sitdown and be quiet, right?
So introducing narration as ateacher seems like a jump, but
it doesn't have to be like abrick.
Like this you could be likeokay, now narrate to your
neighbor, likeate, like switch.
(28:20):
You know, like you, I'mthinking of different ways.
What are some ways you canthink of that we can get this
into like other?
Speaker 1 (28:29):
areas right.
Well, when Charlotte Mason yeah, when she introduced this idea
and her her own curriculum wasused in hundreds of schools in
england during her lifetime, thetypical teacher to student
ratio was 1 to 40.
It was typical to have 40children in the classroom.
(28:49):
So, yes, narration under thoseconditions, if you can imagine
it.
And they developed ways to makeit work and, as you, one of
them was to have the studentsnarrate to each other, because
narration is for the student,it's their own mental activity.
That is like the reallycritical part of what's
(29:09):
happening and that matters morethan that.
The teacher here, every singlestudent, give a narration.
So, allowing students tonarrate.
They would have studentsnarrate just to a partner in
groups, because they were a lotof.
These schools were poorerschools and they couldn't even
afford 40 copies of a book thatwas going to be used, so then
(29:30):
only by 10.
And then they would divide thegroup of 40 children up into
groups of four and each groupwould get one book and they
would read it to each other andthen narrate to each other
within their small groups.
Another way that you can do itin the classroom silent
narration is also legitimate.
(29:51):
I will say that it's notsomething that you want to
introduce until a child iscompletely comfortable and
familiar and they know what isexpected with narration.
But once they do, you can askthem to narrate silently to
themselves.
So, for example, in a classroom, if there's been a lesson
either where the teacher readsomething or some material or
(30:12):
students read material forthemselves, you can say okay, I
want you to go ahead and narrateto yourself silently for two
minutes and then you can begin agroup narration where you have
a child start at the beginning,narrate a part, and you just
stop them and say call on thenext person to pick it up and go
(30:33):
through the narration whereeach child just narrates a part.
And narrating a part is alegitimate mental exercise.
It doesn't have to be everysingle thing I ever learn.
I personally have to narratethe whole thing.
It doesn't, you know.
You can just be narrating partsof things.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Two more kind of detailed questions do you ever
correct a narration, like ifthey get a detail wrong or like
leave some big part out, do youcorrect that?
Do you prompt them with aquestion?
How do you like support them intheir narration as they're
learning to do it better andbetter, right, well, one of
charlotte mason's principles isnot to interrupt a narration to
let the child finish.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
So that's important, but it doesn't mean that you
have to let wrong and you knowif it's wrong.
If they actually miss acritical point or said something
that was incorrect, it doesn'tmean you don't correct that, but
you do let them finish.
And then in a group situation,charlotte Mason would have let
the rest, some other kids in theclass, say you know anybody
(31:29):
else have any other thoughts?
Or did you hear something thatneeds to be, you know,
straightened out, and let theother kids fix the narration and
correct it.
But if you're just workingone-on-one with a particular
student, you can say I think youmisunderstood this.
This is the way you know, thisis how it actually is.
You know correct somethingwhatever it is, without you know
(31:51):
making a big, you knowproduction of it.
But you do want to make surethat the child has the you know
the right information.
You don't have to do things wetry to correct.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, you're not sitting there with a clipboard
and a rubric like checkingthings off and giving points on
a narration.
It's like, okay, am I hearingthe general gist of this and can
I probe and prompt a little bitto round out that memory and
that ability to communicate?
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Well, when you're first training a child with
narration, a lot of times itisn't just that you want that
something was wrong, but that itwas just incomplete and you
would like a little more.
And so when they have finishedand the reason and the reason
that charlotte mason doesn'twant you to interrupt is just
it's about that respecting thechild as a person and their
(32:40):
interaction with the materialall of that mental process will
be interrupted if you stop themin the middle and they're not
going to be able to go back.
You know they have to get to theend of their thought process
and then you can move on.
And it's perfectly legitimateto say can you tell me a little
bit more about something?
And I think it helps if you'revery specific.
So you know, for example, youknow if the child was narrating
(33:02):
something about BenjaminFranklin and it just feels very
general, and you say, well, canyou tell me a little bit more
about you know, the job he hadin his family or what he did in
his family's candle makingbusiness.
Give them a specific startingpoint and then that is a little
bit like a seed that they can.
You might get more, you mightnot get more, depending on.
(33:25):
You know how well they werepaying attention, but at least
that gives them somethingconcrete to hang on to.
So it's always, it's alwaysokay to ask for a little more.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
And then my next question is how does this change
?
You've talked about starting atsix, doing it naturally in the
three, four, five range.
And then how does it progress?
You've mentioned writing.
You know, talk, talk me through, like the developmental
sequence of this.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Right, okay, so I, I think of narration in terms of
fluency, and so I, I, I thinkthat there's a progression.
There's kind of like fourstages.
So if you think about the firstthree years grades one to three
or so, you're building oralfluency.
And even even your, you knowthe ones who struggle a little
bit more at age six, if they areallowed to narrate, you know,
(34:14):
daily, by the time they're ninethey will be quite fluent oral
narrators and so right around,and so then the next three years
say approximately ages, and sothen the next three years say
(34:34):
approximately ages 10 to 12, orgrades 4 to 6, in that range you
can introduce writtennarrations.
And this is it's a process.
You might start with just onewritten narration a week when
they're nine, but your goal isfluency in written narration,
but your goal is fluency inwritten narration.
And so you're looking ahead tosay at 12, maybe 13, that that
child will be a fluent writtennarrator and they will be able
to write as much in a writtennarration as they could give in
(34:56):
a normal narration, just asfluently.
It isn't quite the same thing,it's's not composition at that
stage, it is just writtennarration.
I often tell people the mostimportant word in written
narration is narration.
The writing is just the meansof narrating at that stage.
But then by the time you hitthat kind of junior high stage,
(35:20):
the third stage is to go aheadand introduce formal composition
.
The third stage is to go aheadand introduce formal composition
.
Some students some kids mightstill be have not quite be
fluent in their writtennarration.
Some kids will be.
You know, there's just a wholerange of ability when it comes
to writing.
So some kids may still beworking on their written fluency
but even so they're usuallyready to go ahead and begin what
(35:42):
we think of as more formalcomposition.
You know you can begin editingyour work.
We don't usually edit writtennarrations, we just consider
them rough drafts and don'tworry about correcting them.
But you know, you hit thatstage and it's partly because
they begin to care themselvesmore about correctness in their
writing.
Some kids care at a younger age, but a lot of them don't.
And so, but by the time theyhit, you know 12 or you know, so
(36:05):
they begin to care that theirspelling is correct, that their
you know their punctuation andcapitalization, that their
writing is more correct, and soyou can begin working on, like
editing those written narrationsand introducing.
You know more of theformalities of writing.
You know introductions,conclusions, paragraph writing.
You know introductions,conclusions, um, paragraph.
(36:27):
You know what that sort ofthing, and then what I consider
to be like the third stage is,really could be anywhere from
the last one to three years ofhigh school.
Literally, it can wait untilthe final year of high school if
your child isn't ready untilthen, um, to just literally
assign formal composition,working on essays.
(36:48):
In Know and Tell I lay out awhole process for transitioning
from written narration towriting essays.
That process is laid out inthere.
You know when you begin andwhen you, you know, achieve, you
know, complete facility withthat process is just going to
vary so much.
You know, some kids are justnatural writers, just like
(37:11):
they're natural narrators, andat 11 or 12, you know, they're
just all ready to go ahead andwrite long papers.
Some kids at 15 are stillstruggling.
So you, you know narrationactually allows you to work with
them where they are, to makeprogress, you know, and get them
to that point where they'reable to write fluently.
And one of the things theexperience is something I've
(37:33):
seen happen so many times that Idon't think it's an accident
and of course I work with a lotof homeschoolers, and
homeschoolers with their highschoolers often have a lot of
younger students as well and thehigh schoolers are left on
their own.
They're independent learners.
They can do a lot, butsometimes they don't get to
formal composition at all andI've heard this same story so
(37:55):
many times.
Well, we did a writtennarration but we never did
formal composition.
And then all of a sudden mystudent went off to college and
they got A's.
Their professors gave them A'sin writing because they know how
to narrate, they know how toget their words down in writing
and it's not that difficult, foryou know a 16, 17, 18 year old
(38:16):
who can write their thoughtsdown, you know on paper to very
quickly pick up the conventionsof how you know how that writing
needs to be presented in aclassroom situation and they're
just prepared and ready to adapttheir narration to the writing
assignments they get in college.
And I've heard that same storyso many times.
So narration, even withoutformal composition, very much
(38:40):
prepares a student for collegewriting.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
Yeah, what I'm hearing is that the stages build
upon themselves.
So my student didn't startCharlotte Mason until he was
form two, so he was fifth grade,maybe fourth grade, and so he
had never done narration in thisway.
So do you suggest for kids thatthis is brand new, to like,
(39:05):
that you kind of start thosebasic skills of telling and then
kind of move into oral orwritten or narration, or is it
okay to jump right into,whatever the age they are?
Speaker 1 (39:17):
I think it's important to begin with oral
narration, no matter what ageyou're starting.
But the difference is that anolder student will become fluent
at doing that much more quickly.
They don't need three years,like a six-year-old needs three
years, and so if you'reintroducing narration for the
first time to an older student,I would suggest a period of oral
narration only while they buildan understanding of what
(39:40):
narration is.
But it's quite possible atolder ages that they've already
been doing writing, more writingyou know in their school
activities, and so you canintroduce written narration more
quickly.
You know four weeks, six weeks,eight weeks, just depending on.
You know when you want to bringit in and you may be able to go
(40:01):
ahead and introduce the idea ofwritten narration more
frequently.
You know you don't need to goonce.
Start with once a week.
You may be able to go ahead andintroduce the idea of written
narration more frequently.
You know you don't need to goonce.
Start with once a week.
You may be able to go ahead anddo it three times a week, five
times a week.
You know you can startnarration at any point, even
with a high schooler.
It's not like too late, andthat's because it is a natural
human activity that we're justtapping into and kind of using
(40:22):
in a more structured way.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
How do you go about introducing this to a child?
Speaker 1 (40:28):
I was going to ask the same thing okay, one of the
things as like like, if you, ifyou're talking, if you're
talking about like asix-year-old, like you probably
probably never heard the wordand so you know you really just
started out by can you tell meback?
Can you tell me?
Can you tell me back?
Can you tell me what can youtell me about what we just read
(40:48):
and use that word tell.
I suggest introducing the wordnarration in your everyday life,
if you possibly can, in ahomeschool setting with that
oldest kid.
Once you've got that childnarrating, the younger ones are
going to come along and they'regoing to already know what's
expected.
They're going to see it andthey're going to understand.
(41:10):
But you know, if your husbandcomes home and tells you what
happens at work and you can say,oh, that was a great narration,
you know.
Or if your child comes in andstarts telling you about this
big, elaborate game or somemovie, or heaven forbid, do they
not always want to tell youwhat's happening in their video
games?
That's the narration story ofmy life, and just use the word I
(41:32):
like that what it is thatyou're.
You're asking them to do um witholder students, I think, and
it's really important that theyunderstand the why behind what
you're asking them to do,especially if they've been doing
other academic work, and you'reintroducing narration as a new
thing.
If they understand the whybehind it, that this is
(41:52):
something that's going to help,you think, remember, make
connections, they're more likelyto at least be willing to try.
The truth of the matter is, alot of times kids don't like.
They just don't like this,particularly, I think, in a
homeschool setting where it'sjust the kid and mom all the
time, back and forth, narrating.
(42:13):
It's actually more dynamic andexciting.
In a group setting Narrationbecomes because the relationship
building aspect of itsolidifies the group.
They narrate with each other,to each other, they feed off
each other's narrations.
That can lead into discussion,and so it's probably less boring
it.
But here's what I, what I'velearned.
(42:34):
There's another thing that I'velearned from experience
narration works, even if theydon't like it.
Narration works even if theydon't enjoy it.
One of the things in one of thechapters in Know and Tell is I
went to several young adults whohad been educated Charlotte
Mason style and they had usednarration all their through
(42:56):
their school.
But now they were in collegecollege grads, you know out
doing things as adults, and Ijust asked them how did
narration prepare you for whatyou're doing today?
And they all you know they verykindly and graciously wrote me
their you know experiences.
I think almost every one ofthem said that they didn't
(43:18):
necessarily like it, that theydidn't enjoy it.
A couple of them actually usedthe word hate.
Those were my kids, I think.
The other kids just didn't dothat because I wasn't their mom,
so they weren't that strong.
But so they don't always enjoyit because it is such a mental
labor it's interesting though,because you know so.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
my son has a teacher that comes to our house.
She's amazing.
She homeschooled five of herown kids using classical and
char Mason methods, and so shecause we had some other teachers
that came from, you know, brickand mortar school and it just
wasn't the best fit for him.
And so with her, and he'll tellme, I love to narrate with her,
(43:57):
I love with Ms Wendy, but foryou, I, you know, and I'm just
he's like, cause you're my momand I was like, but it should be
exciting with me too.
So I think there is, you know,and I'm just he's like, cause
you're my mom and I was like,but it should be exciting with
me too.
So I think there is, you know,and if you're in a group setting
or in a micro school and youhave, you know, your friend
running a micro school andyou're, you're sending your
child to them.
Maybe they'll like it morebecause it's not you and you're.
(44:18):
you know, because already asmoms we're demanding our you
know we have so many demands onour kids already, so I think
sometimes in their mind it'slike another demand, another,
something else that we'retelling them they have to do,
whereas if they're havingsomeone else tell them they're
not used to, you know, theydon't have the same amount of
demands coming from that person.
(44:38):
Maybe it has something to dowith that, I don't know.
No-transcript.
Is narration going to beapplied to all different
(45:00):
subjects?
Or how can it be applied toscience, math, history?
You know, is this somethingthat you use in every single
subject or is it just oneparticular subject?
Speaker 1 (45:11):
No, it's not just for one subject.
You can narrate literallyanything you know.
You can even narrate in math.
If you've ever asked yourstudent, you know.
Can you explain to me how yougot this answer?
Especially I had one studentwhen he did algebra.
He would he got the rightanswers and he showed nothing.
(45:31):
He showed no work whatsoever.
Showing your work is a kind ofmath narration.
You're showing me the stepsthat you took to get there, but
also explaining it orally.
Tell me how you got this answer, how did you solve this problem
?
But I mean you can narrate andthis is one of the ways where,
if you are teaching differentsubjects, narration might take
(45:55):
different forms.
In science, it might be aperfectly legitimate way to
narrate, to draw a diagram ormake a table with information.
That is a kind of narration aswell.
You know to collect it In.
In some, in things like history, you know drawing a picture or
acting it out.
(46:15):
You know dramatizing somethingthat's happened, setting up a
model.
You know it's not.
These are, you know these arethe kinds of activities that you
sometimes see.
You know in all kinds of schoolenvironments.
You know make a diorama.
That's a kind of narration too,you know, because you're
showing or telling what you know, can narrate, and there's
(46:42):
always a way of sharing ortelling what you know about any
subject.
So you know, one of the thingsthat Charlotte Mason often does
in her schools and CharlotteMason educators do today, is
picture study, which looks like.
I mean, it's a piece of visualart.
(47:02):
So the child looks at apainting.
Usually you know a famous orwell-known painting, a prominent
artist and then she would, justafter they looked carefully at
it she'd have them, you know putit away, turn it over and then
tell what they saw.
But a lot of times kids like tonarrate their paintings in
other ways, and so I've seenLego models set up to look like
(47:25):
such a good idea what they wereseeing in the painting.
I've seen dot like graph paperwhere they graphed a graph
version of you know, either adetail in the painting or or a
whole.
Yeah, my son is sketched, takea graph like that yeah, he's
sketched his perler beads orsomething and make a version of
(47:48):
a painting your son likes tosketch what he sees.
Speaker 3 (47:51):
Well, yeah, he'll sketch, because we do picture
study every Monday and sometimeshe'll sketch or watercolor or
clay.
He's done clay models of someof the paintings and with
Alviary they pick one artist perterm and so he really gets to
dive in, and they even did lastyear one of the terms he did a
(48:14):
sculptor, so it wasn't justpaintings and then he would
sculpt them and I guess that's aform of narration that I never
thought of.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
It absolutely is, and so there's really nothing.
When you really kind of youknow, start thinking about how
you can tell somebody whatyou've learned, what you've seen
, what you know, as I said,whether it's you know by talking
or writing, or drawing.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
In Prenda we have a whole picture study section,
especially for our littles, anda an artist like a people
section.
You know to talk about theartist and very charlotte mason
inspired, and one of my favoritethings that our kids do is just
play like.
Play like you are this painting.
Play like you are thisbeautiful piece of music, you
know, um.
So it's like they'll bring in.
(49:03):
It's like, well, I'm what wasthe other day, uh, they were
doing something aboutcharlemagne.
This was a while ago and theywere like playing charlemagne
and like play like we, they,they had read something and then
they were like acting it out,but not really like acting it
out like a play, but they'rejust like acting like they're
these people and being creative,and and I just thought like, oh
, they're pulling out littledetails of like what they were
(49:26):
just read and then they're likeexpressing that in their play.
I'm like that's a really coollittle callback that shows like,
oh, I, I noticed that detailand I'm holding onto that.
It's very fun.
Speaker 1 (49:36):
Right, and that's exactly what how narration can
come out naturally with youngerchildren.
But even older kids, like yousay, they may want to play at
what they've had, and sometimeswith special needs children, you
will see that that they areprocessing the things that
they've learned and that willcome out in their play.
(49:56):
I have a friend with a specialneeds child who had some pretty
serious speech issues and delaysand so narration, just normal
spoken narration, was difficultfor them, but she was reading
him, I think it was.
She was reading Pilgrim'sProgress and there was one
particular episode in therewhere a couple of the characters
(50:18):
are trapped by falling into apit and she found him in their
backyard and he was digging apit and she realized that he was
in a sense narrating the storyin his play that they had read
from the thing.
And so, yeah, narration,there's really no limits on how
it can be applied.
(50:39):
It's as creative as studentsand teachers want to be.
It can take almost any formthat human communication can
take.
Speaker 3 (50:49):
I love this so much so we could keep talking about
all things Charlotte Masonnarration, but we do need to
wrap up.
So this is a question we askall of our guests.
Karen, so who is someone whohas kindled your love of
learning, or curiosity,motivation, passion?
If you could totally pickCharlotte Mason, it sounds like
she has really inspired you.
Speaker 1 (51:11):
Me.
Charlotte Mason is one.
She has one of the deepest andbroadest minds her thought that
I've ever encountered fromanybody that I've ever read.
It's been a process of mine,ongoing, and I guarantee you I
will never catch up but to readwhat Charlotte Mason read.
(51:32):
And so she has those six thickbooks that she wrote herself,
but within them are referencesto scores and scores and scores
of other books and works thatshe read or was familiar with.
And I've kind of gone behindher and, as I said, I will never
(51:53):
catch up and read the thingsthat she read and I, the more I
read outside of her and I comeback and I read and I'm like
just so fascinated by how wellshe understood and integrated
other people's thought into herbasic, fundamental understanding
.
It's so impressive to see solike charlotte mason's.
Speaker 2 (52:13):
Like 1840s in england .
Um maria montessori.
Like 1870s, italy.
Uh, jean piaget similar timeframe, can't remember the exact
same years but they all kind ofcome together with the same kind
of like deep respect for thechild.
The child is a whole person.
You know, like this connection,like learning, is social
(52:35):
learning, like all of it.
They kind of come to these sameconclusions and create these
different streams where, like, alot of people still hundreds of
years later, like, like, arereally living into these
principles.
Meanwhile, in the united stateswe're inventing public education
and it's like so vastlydifferent and they're just like
these little threads of peoplein the united states who have
held on to some of in thehomeschooling world or in the
(52:57):
classical education world.
It's just like, oh, it is timefor these ideas to like be the
norm already.
So, so we can have, we can havegenerations of kids who are
grounded and rooted and, likereally know who they are and are
thinkers.
So thank you so much for comingon.
Oh, one last question how canlearners learn more about your
work?
Where can we find your booksand things?
Speaker 1 (53:21):
Okay, I do.
I do have a website,caringglassnet just those 10
letters, caringglassnet.
So there's like I have a blog.
I have a blog on there.
I sometimes I honestly don'tupdate that site.
Real often my books are on canbe found on Amazon.
You know everything's availablethrough Amazon and some other.
(53:44):
You know everything's availablethrough.
Speaker 2 (53:45):
Amazon and some other other.
Okay, Well, we'll get all thoselinks in the description so
people can find you easily.
Thank you so much for coming onthe Kindle podcast.
This has been awesome.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
Well, thanks so much for inviting me.
I've enjoyed talking to you.
That's it for today.
We hope you enjoyed thisepisode of the Kindle podcast.
If it was helpful to you like,subscribe and go follow us on
social at Prenda Learn.
If you have a question you'dlike for us to address, all you
need to do is email podcast atPrendacom and you can also go to
our website, wwwPrendacom, andyou can sign up for the weekly
(54:18):
newsletter, the.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
Sunday Spark, the Kindle podcast, is brought to
you by Prenda.
Prenda makes it easy for you tostart and run an amazing micro
school based on all of the ideaswe talk about here on the
Kindled podcast.
If you want more informationabout becoming a Prenda guide,
just go to Prendacom.
Thanks for listening andremember to keep kindling.
That whole telling thing is how we form friendships
, it's how we get to know people, it's how they get to know us.
And so when you bring it intoan academic setting and you say
I'm going to have you tell aboutthe things that you're learning
about, you kind of tap intothat natural relational process.
That's just part of who we areas persons.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hi and welcome to the Kindled podcast where we dig
into the art and science.
And welcome to the Kindledpodcast where we dig into the
art and science behind kindlingthe motivation, curiosity and
mental well-being of the younghumans in our lives.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Together, we'll discover practical tools and
strategies you can use to helpkids unlock their full potential
and become the strongestversion of their future selves.
So we're going to talk to KarenGlass.
(00:54):
She has been studying andlearning about Charlotte Mason's
philosophy of education since1994.
She homeschooled her fourchildren, who are now all adult
graduates.
But her passion for thislife-giving view of education
has not diminished and shewelcomes opportunities to share
it with others.
She has spoken at homeschoolconferences, taught online
classes, conducted teachertrainings at schools and served
(01:18):
as an adjunct professor to teachcollege-level classes.
She is also the author ofseveral books based upon
Charlotte Mason's ideas,including Consider this, know
and Tell, the Art of Narrationand Vital Harmony and, most
recently, much May Be Done withSparrows.
After living in Krakow, poland,for almost 25 years, she now
(01:40):
lives in rural Indiana, whereshe continues to read, learn,
teach and write.
Okay, let's go talk to Karen.
Karen, we are so excited tohave you on the Kindled podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Thank you for joining us Well thank you so much for
inviting me.
I'm really excited to kind ofmeet your new audience.
Yeah absolutely.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
We can't wait to introduce Charlotte Mason and
narration to our audience.
So can you start by sharing alittle bit about your journey
and education and what inspiredyou to write a book, and it's
called Know and Tell, which Ilove.
The name of that book, superfun, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Well, I started my educational journey when I
realized I was going to need tohomeschool my children.
My husband and I were planningto move overseas for ministry
and that's just kind of thedefault, like I was planning to
homeschool my children and I wasplanning to just use a normal
(02:39):
out of the box curriculumwithout giving it too much
thought.
But then I box curriculumwithout giving it too much
thought.
But then I, one of my kids werestill quite, quite small, like
three and nine months, I had theopportunity to go visit a
homeschool curriculum fair and Ithought, well, I'm going to
homeschool, so you know, I'lljust go see what they've got
there, even though I, just inthe back of my mind, I was
already defaulting, you know, tothis particular out of the box
(03:03):
curriculum.
While I was there, I wanderedaround and because I've always
liked to read like I've alwaysbeen a reader I was drawn to a
particular vendor in the cornerwho had just a lot of books,
like real books, interestingbooks that you'd want to read
and not just textbooks and whileI'm wandering around there with
my babies, you know, with mybabies.
(03:24):
He came up and handed me a copyof the book For the Children's
Sake by Susan Schaefer McCauley,which is kind of the gateway
for most people my age to.
Charlotte Mason handed me thecopy of the book and says you
need to read this book.
So I bought it, I took it home,still have it and read it and I
jokingly say well, thatcurriculum lost a customer
(03:44):
forever Because it completelyshifted my perspective on what
education is and what it's meantto do.
And so I went wholeheartedlyinto Charlotte Mason.
As soon as I finished readingthat book, I ordered her books
Charlotte Mason's six fatvolumes that she wrote about
education and just jumped rightin and started reading them.
(04:08):
And I have the same experiencethat most people do when they
first start reading CharlotteMason's own words it's a little
overwhelming.
It's a lot overwhelming and atthe time it was just kind of the
dawn of the internet and I wasable to go online via AOL.
There was no web or internetlike we know it today, but I
(04:28):
went online and I found otherpeople they're homeschoolers who
wanted to read and study, andso we started reading and
studying together.
By the time my oldest actuallywas of an age to begin school.
I'd had a couple of years ofreading and thinking about it
and I was just really committedto the concept of you know
Charlotte Mason's view ofeducation, which included
(04:49):
narration.
And I sometimes jokingly saythe world and myself we're all
very lucky that my oldest childwas a natural narrator.
Not all kids are, but he was anatural narrator and because of
that, uh, as I jumped in andstarted using it, I saw how
effective it was very quickly,which doesn't always happen with
(05:10):
a six-year-old.
It can take a little time for achild to grow into becoming a
fluent narrator, but because myoldest was a natural narrator,
he just showed me right away howeffective it was.
I I share a story in Know andTell where November of that
first year we read a book it wasAlice Dalgleish's story of
(05:31):
thanks, the Thanksgiving storyand age appropriate and we read
it and he narrated it which Iknow we haven't really talked
yet about what that is, but wewill and he read it and narrated
it for about over the course ofa week and a friend called me
at the end of the week and shehad a son a year older than mine
a year, you know, a gradehigher and she was a little
(05:53):
disappointed because he'd had awriting assignment about the
first Thanksgiving in hiscurriculum which is the same box
curriculum that I had decidednot to use and he was supposed
to write two sentences about thefirst Thanksgiving and he had
written the pilgrims are nice,the Indians are nice.
And she was a little bitdisappointed because it seemed a
little bit lackluster.
(06:13):
And so just after we werefinished with the conversation I
, out of curiosity, went back tomy son, who was six years old,
and I said what can you tell meabout the first Thanksgiving?
And he just told me the wholestory because we'd read that
book, he had narrated it, it wasfresh in his mind and he was
able to articulate all of theevents, including names and
(06:34):
specifics.
And if I didn't transcribe itbut if I had, it would have been
like a page and a half long andit gave me a vision very, very
early in the process of what adifference narration could make
in a child's education.
And I thought I want to seewhat's going to happen if we do
(06:55):
this all the way through.
So at the time it wasn't widelyCharlotte Mason wasn't widely
used beyond elementary agechildren and I didn't know
anybody who had used CharlotteMason's methods, but I was so
impressed by what narration haddone.
You know what a difference itwas making at that stage.
I really wanted to see it and Icommitted us to it.
(07:15):
I said we're going to do it allthe way through and see what
happens.
He was about 10 and we hadgotten into doing written
narrations as well as oral ones.
I remember thinking at the timeso this would have been about
2000 or so I could write a wholebook about this.
Like by then, I had had otherchildren, I'd seen other
(07:38):
families using narration, I'dhad the experience of we're
using narration with childrenwho weren't natural narrators
and and how that worked withthem, because he's the only one
of my kids who's a natural, justa natural narrator.
The others, you know, are kindof more typical, which means
they struggle and it takes alittle longer to to become
fluent.
(07:59):
And so by the time he was 10, Iremember thinking, oh, I could
write a whole book aboutnarration, which eventually I
did in 2018.
I think I published Know andTell.
Took you 18 years of seeing hownarration worked, like the
(08:23):
vision that I had at thebeginning.
Well, I didn't know what itwould look like, but I wanted to
see, and so because of that, Ipaid a lot of attention across
all of those years, not just tothe way narration was working
with my children, but the waythat other families who were
using it talked about it, and Iwas always watching.
And so eventually, thatexperience of paying attention I
(08:46):
was able to, you know,extrapolate basic ideas and
principles that would make itwork and try to make them as
practical as I could.
And so know and tell I'vewritten several books is the
only book that has anypretensions to be practical.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Yeah, the how I found ?
I found it was on Instagram andI don't even think I followed
the person.
She was in her car and she hadyour book.
And she was just like, even ifyou homeschool, you're an
educator, even if you don't useCharlotte Mason, you need to
read this book.
I was like, okay, what is thisbook all about?
And then, because we useCharlotte Mason and I don't have
(09:24):
a natural narrator, I becamereally fascinated about okay,
let's see how I can help him,because I see the value of
narration and I see the value ofthese living books that he
reads.
And so, anyways, that's how Istumbled upon your work.
And now here we are, getting tohear all about Charlotte Mason.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
So take us through Charlotte Mason a little bit
Like what are the basic tenets,like how is it different than
just like how we normally parentor educate what stands out to
you?
Speaker 1 (09:54):
One of the things that I think really makes
Charlotte Mason's approach toeducation distinctive is that
she asked some really importantquestions about education which,
if you look at the besteducators throughout history and
you look at what they weredoing, they usually ask these
same questions and they'rereally basic questions.
So, for example, what is a child?
(10:15):
What is this person that we'retrying to educate?
What is education?
What is it?
What are we trying to do Like,what is this process all about?
So you, you know, a lot of timesyou, you, you, we tend to, as
educators, jump into thisprocess asking questions like
you know, what curriculum do Ineed for math?
What, how do I teach phonics?
(10:36):
You know really specific, nittygritty, practical things.
But Charlotte Mason begins withthese really big questions and
then, once she answers them,what actually makes her kind of
a genius, I would say as aneducational philosopher, is that
, once she answered thosequestions with what she
(10:59):
considered to be principles,like undeniable principles about
what a child and what educationis I'll get to that in a second
she was able to create reallypractical methods while keeping
those principles in mind.
So all of her methods arerooted in those principles and
(11:21):
there's really now, if you pickup a book by Charlotte Mason,
there's going to be about 20principles listed at the front
of them, but there's only twothat are really central and all
the rest are kind of anchoredaround them and they are the
answer to those two questions.
So the first principle ischildren are born persons.
I mean, that's really reallybasic, really simple.
(11:44):
And of course some of the otherprinciples are to elaborate on
what she means by that and whatit means to be a person.
And then she answers the otherquestion what is education, by
saying education is a science ofrelations.
What she means by that is thata person has a natural
(12:05):
relationship with all differentareas of knowledge in the world,
and she kind of divides allknowledge, and this corresponds
to the sort of the medievalrealms of knowledge where they
had divine philosophy, moralphilosophy, natural philosophy.
She kind of breaks it up intothe same general categories of
knowledge of man, knowledge ofGod and knowledge of the world
(12:30):
or the universe, the physicaluniverse.
And so she says as persons weall have a right to develop a
relationship with all thesedifferent realms of knowledge,
different realms of knowledge.
And so she makes theeducational process about
helping a child not just learnand remember certain specific
(12:51):
information, but to actuallyhopefully begin to care.
That's what we think of interms of a relationship, that
it's more than just headknowledge, but it's a heart
response, it's caring.
She even says at one point thequestion isn't how much does the
youth know when he's finishedhis education, how much does he
care?
That's what she's saying.
(13:12):
It's all about therelationships.
And then all of those practicalthings that we do in the
Charlotte Mason educationalparadigm, including narration,
are relationship buildingactivities, because that's, you
know, she keeps those ideascentral, even on a, you know,
practical level.
That's awesome, that's helpful.
(13:34):
So hopefully that's good.
I know we could do a wholeepisode on this.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Yeah, and I love that .
The relationship.
It just isn't the relationshipbetween the adult and the child,
but it's the child'srelationship to the world and to
what they're learning.
I just think, right now we havebeans growing on our windowsill
and sometimes, you know, my sonis on the spectrum and so some
are autistic and sometimes, youknow, he gets very, very hyper
(14:04):
focused on something and it'sreally hard for him to form
relationships with other things.
And so he started school twoweeks ago, in the very first day
for science, instead of diving,we use Alviary.
And so instead of diving rightinto his science book, which I
think he's reading, the Girl whoDrew Butterflies, and he's
reading an Aristotle book, andso, instead of diving into that,
(14:25):
it just said to plant somebeans.
And it's so amazing to watchhis relationship with these
plants, and so it's not justabout, you know.
And then now he has startedreading the books that go along
with why he needs to plant thesebeans.
But it was really as you'retalking.
I'm like, yeah, he isdeveloping this really beautiful
(14:46):
relationship for things thatgrow.
And then he went into my binthat has I mean, we have lots of
seeds and he hasn't seemedinterested in at all, and he's
pulling them all out, and he'slooking at the cooling hours and
figuring out whenever we canstart growing things.
And this is just all justignited by planting a few, you
(15:06):
know beans, which is really cool.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Right.
So that is, you know, that'sthe underlying philosophy, and
it's why narration is such asuch such an important piece of
what people think of as aCharlotte Mason education,
because narration is arelationship building practice.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Yeah, so can you dive into that?
Like, what is narration?
You know a lot of people may beunfamiliar that we've been
saying the word a lot, so canyou tell us what it is?
And then, how does it differfrom other forms of learning
activities that you know?
Because this could again,narration could be used in a
traditional classroom as welland or in a homeschool
(15:50):
environment.
So like, how is that different?
And then also, just what is it?
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Right, okay, so narration is basically a natural
human activity.
It's the same thing as telling,just telling.
So I mean it's a natural partof our lives.
So you know, if your child goesto a brick and mortar school
and they come home and you say,well, what happened today?
(16:15):
Or you start telling them aboutwhat happened at home while
they were gone, you're narratingto each other.
You know, if you read a book orlisten to a great podcast or
watch a great movie and you, youknow, you go and start talking
to a friend or your spouse aboutit because you want them to
enter in and share yourenthusiasm for it, that's
narration, like it is the mostbasic kind of you know relating
(16:41):
to somebody else, usuallysomething, anything.
It's not you know.
You just, we just narrate aboutour lives and I said it's a
relationship building activityand when you think of that in
that context, you understandthat when you talk to other
people, that that's howrelationships form.
The more personal you tell themthings, the more personal the
(17:04):
relationship becomes.
But even if you're at adoctor's office, relating the
symptoms of your illness to yourdoctor, you're still narrating.
It's just a professionalrelationship.
But that whole telling thing ishow we form friendships.
It's how we get to know people,it's how they get to know us.
And so when you bring it intoan academic setting and you say
(17:27):
I'm going to have you tell aboutthe things that you're learning
about, you kind of tap intothat natural relational process.
That's just part of who we areas persons.
Again, it's related to thatprinciple.
You know of who we are aspersons.
Again, it's related to thatprinciple.
You know of who we are aspersons and the way that we
interact and relate with eachother and with other things.
So what it looks like if you'reusing narration in an academic
(17:53):
setting is that a teacher or aparent will read something to a
younger child, or a child isable to read for themselves, may
go ahead and read something andthen the child is invited to
tell it back in their own words.
So it's not like they need tomemorize it word for word and
retell it and building the habitof doing this.
(18:16):
This is one of the reasons itcould take a little longer.
In Charlotte Mason's world shesaid this is six, with this
formal request to say you know,here's some specific material
(18:44):
that I want you to narrate, andthe reason that she waited until
then is because when you arecalled upon to narrate
purposefully in that way somespecific material, there's a
huge amount of mental activitythat has to go into it.
But you have to understand whatwas heard, you have to remember
what was.
You know what was in thematerial.
You have to order it, you haveto find a beginning place and
(19:06):
then work your way through it insome kind of an orderly fashion
and then you have to formulatethe words and sentences you know
.
That will allow you to conveywhat it is that you've said.
It's much, much easier to tellyou know what you had for
breakfast or what happened atwork today than to retell.
You know a chapter in a bookthat you've read or some
(19:29):
specific you know maybe you werereading about.
You know a scientific principleabout some kind of animal.
It's more difficult to tellthat material and it requires
all of that mental activity.
So it takes time for a child.
Like I said, my son was anatural narrator.
He just he could.
(19:49):
And there are natural narratorsout there who just like yep,
that's no problem, let me tellyou all about it, and sometimes
their narrations will be longerthan the original material.
There are other kids who reallystruggle to do that.
But it doesn't mean thatnarration is less effective if
it doesn't come as naturally toa child as that for them,
(20:14):
because it's building theirmental skills.
You know, all of those, allthose habits of thinking.
Narration actually trains youto think in a particular way,
very, very different from theway that if you went to an
institutional school where youwere asked questions for
specific pieces of information,that trains that.
(20:36):
I mean, that's how I it waswhen I went to school, you know,
and we were told, even toldhe'll read the questions at the
end of the section.
Before you read the section,then you know what you're
looking for and you just skimfor answers.
It's a very different processand it teaches you to think in a
completely different way thanwhen you have to listen with
(20:56):
enough attention to be able toretell it in your own words.
So that's what narration lookslike, you know.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
It sounds like it leads to a deeper learning and
then also retention, would yousay that?
And then I'm thinking about wejust interviewed Peter Lillidall
.
Yeah, so he wrote a book calledBuilding Thinking Classrooms
and his book is focusing on math.
(21:25):
But he told us, you know, youcan't learn unless you think.
But he was going intoclassrooms like 400 classrooms
and noticing that kids were notthinking, they were just
mimicking or doing what theteacher was saying.
So what I'm hearing isnarrating really helps them
(21:46):
retain the information becausethey're having to, like you said
, there's so many cognitiveprocesses happening.
They have to really listen.
So that's building up a reallygood habit.
And then they have to, you know, spit it back out.
So I could imagine, if you'redoing this year after year, by
the time you're 18, that you area really good thinker and could
(22:07):
use those skills for otherthings, especially if you know.
You decide you know to go on tocollege or whatever that may be
.
And so Katie wrote a curriculumfor our micro schools and it's
called treasure hunt reading.
And so they had these littlestories like um, you know, they
have a letter and then she hasvideos that go along with it.
(22:27):
She's a venture K.
It's really cool.
And so my seven year old hasbeen doing these and so I have
been having him narrate theselittle stories back to me.
And it is amazing, from thefirst day that I had him retell
it to me, he gave me just a fewdetails, just kind of like the
pilgrims are nice, you know.
And then now we've been doingit for a couple of weeks and
(22:49):
he's even adding his own detailsto the story, because they're
really short stories.
But he's giving me details andthen he's adding other
adjectives and other words, andso it's really cool to see his
mind developing just by usingthese.
You know four or five sentencestories in this curriculum that
he's using, so you can reallyuse narration even if you're not
(23:11):
using Charlotte Mason.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
All right.
It's a method that can beapplied in, you know, the
classroom and homes, homeschools, in Sunday schools.
I mean just almost anyapplication where you've got
people adults or children, youknow in a learning situation.
It can be used in all of thosethings.
You know, in all of thosethings.
And we've talked aboutnarration, like because you know
(23:35):
, when you first start kind oftrying to understand what it is,
we talk about it this way wherethe telling is just orally
telling it back, but eventuallythat could become written
narration and it buildscommunication and writing skills
.
You know, from age six to 18,as you said, this is helping
children become bettercommunicators.
This is helping children becomebetter communicators.
(23:57):
I read an article in Forbesmagazine quite a few years ago
now and it was talking about thetop.
I don't remember the exactnumber, but like the top skills
that employers look for, likethese are the most things they
value the most, and nine-tenthsof them were accomplished
through narration because theywere all communication skills
(24:18):
and so you know, no matter whatour students you know are going
to do later in life, my son, mynatural communicator son, is now
34 years old and he's asheriff's deputy.
He's a Marine, is in the MarineReserves and he has told me on
multiple occasions situationswhere his narration, you know,
(24:39):
habits and his practice, hisability to speak, has impressed
people.
And he has to write.
You know he's a sheriff'sdeputy, so he has to write a
report of every interaction hehas with everybody, everywhere,
every day.
You know they have to makereports, and so there's his
narration skills prepared himfor that reports, and so there's
(25:00):
his narration skills preparedhim for that.
When he was, when he was intraining in the Marines, he had
to read dispatches and you'resupposed to summarize the orders
and retell them, because theyjust come in a bullet point form
but you have to explain them sothat everybody in the you know,
everybody in the groupunderstands.
And they just randomly picked acouple of people to demonstrate
what it might look like.
(25:20):
And so they randomly picked himand he did such an amazing job
that they took him, because, Imean, he was just a recruit at
the time.
They took him to the officer'sgroup where they were doing the
same sort of thing and had himdemonstrate it for them, because
his narration skills were justprepared him to do this thing
that they needed done.
And that's the thing aboutnarration.
(25:42):
It's just it helps to buildcommunication skills, both
orally and in writing,comprehension skills, like you
said, memory, if you think aboutin real life, um, if somebody
gives you directions or theytell you they want you to pick
up a couple of things at thestore or something, the very
first thing you do is you startrepeating it back, like
narrating it back to yourself,because that will help you
(26:04):
remember.
So, yes, you know, as you said,narration does play a role in
memory and it also because youhave to deal with all of your
knowledge, kind of as a whole.
It helps to make connections.
You're always makingconnections and remember,
education is a science ofrelations, in a Charlotte Mason
(26:25):
paradigm, and this kind ofactivity helps you connect the
things you're learning now withwhat you've already learned
before.
But it doesn't always have tobe oral.
That's what I actually wastrying to say.
You can narrate via drawing,drama, other art forms.
(26:45):
There's more than one way tonarrate.
Subject matter is whatever thelearning environment is.
You can provide different waysfor children to tell back what
they know.
One thing that we'll sometimessuggest is building models with
(27:08):
you know, with blocks, withLegos, you know.
Setting up a scene based onsomething that you read.
And I sometimes say to momsMinecraft narrations aren't
things.
I've seen amazing kids buildamazing things in Minecraft.
Here's the ejection pyramids,here's the city of London, and
that is a narration of a song.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
Yeah, I never thought of that.
It reminds me of play therapytoo.
They, you know, give you abunch of things and you have to
retell, like what's going on ormake sense of what's happening
in your life by using blocks orlittle figurines or something.
So it sounds very similar andconnected to that.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Right, and that's the thing.
Sometimes you might not evenrealize how things actually fit
under this umbrella of narration.
Any form in which a person cantell or show what they know is a
form of narration.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
I'm trying to imagine this happening in a classroom
right now, like, typically,classrooms are not places where
lots of kids talk.
You know you're supposed to sitdown and be quiet, right?
So introducing narration as ateacher seems like a jump, but
it doesn't have to be like abrick.
Like this you could be likeokay, now narrate to your
neighbor, likeate, like switch.
(28:20):
You know, like you, I'mthinking of different ways.
What are some ways you canthink of that we can get this
into like other?
Speaker 1 (28:29):
areas right.
Well, when Charlotte Mason yeah, when she introduced this idea
and her her own curriculum wasused in hundreds of schools in
england during her lifetime, thetypical teacher to student
ratio was 1 to 40.
It was typical to have 40children in the classroom.
(28:49):
So, yes, narration under thoseconditions, if you can imagine
it.
And they developed ways to makeit work and, as you, one of
them was to have the studentsnarrate to each other, because
narration is for the student,it's their own mental activity.
That is like the reallycritical part of what's
(29:09):
happening and that matters morethan that.
The teacher here, every singlestudent, give a narration.
So, allowing students tonarrate.
They would have studentsnarrate just to a partner in
groups, because they were a lotof.
These schools were poorerschools and they couldn't even
afford 40 copies of a book thatwas going to be used, so then
(29:30):
only by 10.
And then they would divide thegroup of 40 children up into
groups of four and each groupwould get one book and they
would read it to each other andthen narrate to each other
within their small groups.
Another way that you can do itin the classroom silent
narration is also legitimate.
(29:51):
I will say that it's notsomething that you want to
introduce until a child iscompletely comfortable and
familiar and they know what isexpected with narration.
But once they do, you can askthem to narrate silently to
themselves.
So, for example, in a classroom, if there's been a lesson
either where the teacher readsomething or some material or
(30:12):
students read material forthemselves, you can say okay, I
want you to go ahead and narrateto yourself silently for two
minutes and then you can begin agroup narration where you have
a child start at the beginning,narrate a part, and you just
stop them and say call on thenext person to pick it up and go
(30:33):
through the narration whereeach child just narrates a part.
And narrating a part is alegitimate mental exercise.
It doesn't have to be everysingle thing I ever learn.
I personally have to narratethe whole thing.
It doesn't, you know.
You can just be narrating partsof things.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Two more kind of detailed questions do you ever
correct a narration, like ifthey get a detail wrong or like
leave some big part out, do youcorrect that?
Do you prompt them with aquestion?
How do you like support them intheir narration as they're
learning to do it better andbetter, right, well, one of
charlotte mason's principles isnot to interrupt a narration to
let the child finish.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
So that's important, but it doesn't mean that you
have to let wrong and you knowif it's wrong.
If they actually miss acritical point or said something
that was incorrect, it doesn'tmean you don't correct that, but
you do let them finish.
And then in a group situation,charlotte Mason would have let
the rest, some other kids in theclass, say you know anybody
(31:29):
else have any other thoughts?
Or did you hear something thatneeds to be, you know,
straightened out, and let theother kids fix the narration and
correct it.
But if you're just workingone-on-one with a particular
student, you can say I think youmisunderstood this.
This is the way you know, thisis how it actually is.
You know correct somethingwhatever it is, without you know
(31:51):
making a big, you knowproduction of it.
But you do want to make surethat the child has the you know
the right information.
You don't have to do things wetry to correct.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, you're not sitting there with a clipboard
and a rubric like checkingthings off and giving points on
a narration.
It's like, okay, am I hearingthe general gist of this and can
I probe and prompt a little bitto round out that memory and
that ability to communicate?
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Well, when you're first training a child with
narration, a lot of times itisn't just that you want that
something was wrong, but that itwas just incomplete and you
would like a little more.
And so when they have finishedand the reason and the reason
that charlotte mason doesn'twant you to interrupt is just
it's about that respecting thechild as a person and their
(32:40):
interaction with the materialall of that mental process will
be interrupted if you stop themin the middle and they're not
going to be able to go back.
You know they have to get to theend of their thought process
and then you can move on.
And it's perfectly legitimateto say can you tell me a little
bit more about something?
And I think it helps if you'revery specific.
So you know, for example, youknow if the child was narrating
(33:02):
something about BenjaminFranklin and it just feels very
general, and you say, well, canyou tell me a little bit more
about you know, the job he hadin his family or what he did in
his family's candle makingbusiness.
Give them a specific startingpoint and then that is a little
bit like a seed that they can.
You might get more, you mightnot get more, depending on.
(33:25):
You know how well they werepaying attention, but at least
that gives them somethingconcrete to hang on to.
So it's always, it's alwaysokay to ask for a little more.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
And then my next question is how does this change
?
You've talked about starting atsix, doing it naturally in the
three, four, five range.
And then how does it progress?
You've mentioned writing.
You know, talk, talk me through, like the developmental
sequence of this.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Right, okay, so I, I think of narration in terms of
fluency, and so I, I, I thinkthat there's a progression.
There's kind of like fourstages.
So if you think about the firstthree years grades one to three
or so, you're building oralfluency.
And even even your, you knowthe ones who struggle a little
bit more at age six, if they areallowed to narrate, you know,
(34:14):
daily, by the time they're ninethey will be quite fluent oral
narrators and so right around,and so then the next three years
say approximately ages, and sothen the next three years say
(34:34):
approximately ages 10 to 12, orgrades 4 to 6, in that range you
can introduce writtennarrations.
And this is it's a process.
You might start with just onewritten narration a week when
they're nine, but your goal isfluency in written narration,
but your goal is fluency inwritten narration.
And so you're looking ahead tosay at 12, maybe 13, that that
child will be a fluent writtennarrator and they will be able
to write as much in a writtennarration as they could give in
(34:56):
a normal narration, just asfluently.
It isn't quite the same thing,it's's not composition at that
stage, it is just writtennarration.
I often tell people the mostimportant word in written
narration is narration.
The writing is just the meansof narrating at that stage.
But then by the time you hitthat kind of junior high stage,
(35:20):
the third stage is to go aheadand introduce formal composition
.
The third stage is to go aheadand introduce formal composition
.
Some students some kids mightstill be have not quite be
fluent in their writtennarration.
Some kids will be.
You know, there's just a wholerange of ability when it comes
to writing.
So some kids may still beworking on their written fluency
but even so they're usuallyready to go ahead and begin what
(35:42):
we think of as more formalcomposition.
You know you can begin editingyour work.
We don't usually edit writtennarrations, we just consider
them rough drafts and don'tworry about correcting them.
But you know, you hit thatstage and it's partly because
they begin to care themselvesmore about correctness in their
writing.
Some kids care at a younger age, but a lot of them don't.
And so, but by the time theyhit, you know 12 or you know, so
(36:05):
they begin to care that theirspelling is correct, that their
you know their punctuation andcapitalization, that their
writing is more correct, and soyou can begin working on, like
editing those written narrationsand introducing.
You know more of theformalities of writing.
You know introductions,conclusions, paragraph writing.
You know introductions,conclusions, um, paragraph.
(36:27):
You know what that sort ofthing, and then what I consider
to be like the third stage is,really could be anywhere from
the last one to three years ofhigh school.
Literally, it can wait untilthe final year of high school if
your child isn't ready untilthen, um, to just literally
assign formal composition,working on essays.
(36:48):
In Know and Tell I lay out awhole process for transitioning
from written narration towriting essays.
That process is laid out inthere.
You know when you begin andwhen you, you know, achieve, you
know, complete facility withthat process is just going to
vary so much.
You know, some kids are justnatural writers, just like
(37:11):
they're natural narrators, andat 11 or 12, you know, they're
just all ready to go ahead andwrite long papers.
Some kids at 15 are stillstruggling.
So you, you know narrationactually allows you to work with
them where they are, to makeprogress, you know, and get them
to that point where they'reable to write fluently.
And one of the things theexperience is something I've
(37:33):
seen happen so many times that Idon't think it's an accident
and of course I work with a lotof homeschoolers, and
homeschoolers with their highschoolers often have a lot of
younger students as well and thehigh schoolers are left on
their own.
They're independent learners.
They can do a lot, butsometimes they don't get to
formal composition at all andI've heard this same story so
(37:55):
many times.
Well, we did a writtennarration but we never did
formal composition.
And then all of a sudden mystudent went off to college and
they got A's.
Their professors gave them A'sin writing because they know how
to narrate, they know how toget their words down in writing
and it's not that difficult, foryou know a 16, 17, 18 year old
(38:16):
who can write their thoughtsdown, you know on paper to very
quickly pick up the conventionsof how you know how that writing
needs to be presented in aclassroom situation and they're
just prepared and ready to adapttheir narration to the writing
assignments they get in college.
And I've heard that same storyso many times.
So narration, even withoutformal composition, very much
(38:40):
prepares a student for collegewriting.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
Yeah, what I'm hearing is that the stages build
upon themselves.
So my student didn't startCharlotte Mason until he was
form two, so he was fifth grade,maybe fourth grade, and so he
had never done narration in thisway.
So do you suggest for kids thatthis is brand new, to like,
(39:05):
that you kind of start thosebasic skills of telling and then
kind of move into oral orwritten or narration, or is it
okay to jump right into,whatever the age they are?
Speaker 1 (39:17):
I think it's important to begin with oral
narration, no matter what ageyou're starting.
But the difference is that anolder student will become fluent
at doing that much more quickly.
They don't need three years,like a six-year-old needs three
years, and so if you'reintroducing narration for the
first time to an older student,I would suggest a period of oral
narration only while they buildan understanding of what
(39:40):
narration is.
But it's quite possible atolder ages that they've already
been doing writing, more writingyou know in their school
activities, and so you canintroduce written narration more
quickly.
You know four weeks, six weeks,eight weeks, just depending on.
You know when you want to bringit in and you may be able to go
(40:01):
ahead and introduce the idea ofwritten narration more
frequently.
You know you don't need to goonce.
Start with once a week.
You may be able to go ahead andintroduce the idea of written
narration more frequently.
You know you don't need to goonce.
Start with once a week.
You may be able to go ahead anddo it three times a week, five
times a week.
You know you can startnarration at any point, even
with a high schooler.
It's not like too late, andthat's because it is a natural
human activity that we're justtapping into and kind of using
(40:22):
in a more structured way.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
How do you go about introducing this to a child?
Speaker 1 (40:28):
I was going to ask the same thing okay, one of the
things as like like, if you, ifyou're talking, if you're
talking about like asix-year-old, like you probably
probably never heard the wordand so you know you really just
started out by can you tell meback?
Can you tell me?
Can you tell me back?
Can you tell me what can youtell me about what we just read
(40:48):
and use that word tell.
I suggest introducing the wordnarration in your everyday life,
if you possibly can, in ahomeschool setting with that
oldest kid.
Once you've got that childnarrating, the younger ones are
going to come along and they'regoing to already know what's
expected.
They're going to see it andthey're going to understand.
(41:10):
But you know, if your husbandcomes home and tells you what
happens at work and you can say,oh, that was a great narration,
you know.
Or if your child comes in andstarts telling you about this
big, elaborate game or somemovie, or heaven forbid, do they
not always want to tell youwhat's happening in their video
games?
That's the narration story ofmy life, and just use the word I
(41:32):
like that what it is thatyou're.
You're asking them to do um witholder students, I think, and
it's really important that theyunderstand the why behind what
you're asking them to do,especially if they've been doing
other academic work, and you'reintroducing narration as a new
thing.
If they understand the whybehind it, that this is
(41:52):
something that's going to help,you think, remember, make
connections, they're more likelyto at least be willing to try.
The truth of the matter is, alot of times kids don't like.
They just don't like this,particularly, I think, in a
homeschool setting where it'sjust the kid and mom all the
time, back and forth, narrating.
(42:13):
It's actually more dynamic andexciting.
In a group setting Narrationbecomes because the relationship
building aspect of itsolidifies the group.
They narrate with each other,to each other, they feed off
each other's narrations.
That can lead into discussion,and so it's probably less boring
it.
But here's what I, what I'velearned.
(42:34):
There's another thing that I'velearned from experience
narration works, even if theydon't like it.
Narration works even if theydon't enjoy it.
One of the things in one of thechapters in Know and Tell is I
went to several young adults whohad been educated Charlotte
Mason style and they had usednarration all their through
(42:56):
their school.
But now they were in collegecollege grads, you know out
doing things as adults, and Ijust asked them how did
narration prepare you for whatyou're doing today?
And they all you know they verykindly and graciously wrote me
their you know experiences.
I think almost every one ofthem said that they didn't
(43:18):
necessarily like it, that theydidn't enjoy it.
A couple of them actually usedthe word hate.
Those were my kids, I think.
The other kids just didn't dothat because I wasn't their mom,
so they weren't that strong.
But so they don't always enjoyit because it is such a mental
labor it's interesting though,because you know so.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
my son has a teacher that comes to our house.
She's amazing.
She homeschooled five of herown kids using classical and
char Mason methods, and so shecause we had some other teachers
that came from, you know, brickand mortar school and it just
wasn't the best fit for him.
And so with her, and he'll tellme, I love to narrate with her,
(43:57):
I love with Ms Wendy, but foryou, I, you know, and I'm just
he's like, cause you're my momand I was like, but it should be
exciting with me too.
So I think there is, you know,and I'm just he's like, cause
you're my mom and I was like,but it should be exciting with
me too.
So I think there is, you know,and if you're in a group setting
or in a micro school and youhave, you know, your friend
running a micro school andyou're, you're sending your
child to them.
Maybe they'll like it morebecause it's not you and you're.
(44:18):
you know, because already asmoms we're demanding our you
know we have so many demands onour kids already, so I think
sometimes in their mind it'slike another demand, another,
something else that we'retelling them they have to do,
whereas if they're havingsomeone else tell them they're
not used to, you know, theydon't have the same amount of
demands coming from that person.
(44:38):
Maybe it has something to dowith that, I don't know.
No-transcript.
Is narration going to beapplied to all different
(45:00):
subjects?
Or how can it be applied toscience, math, history?
You know, is this somethingthat you use in every single
subject or is it just oneparticular subject?
Speaker 1 (45:11):
No, it's not just for one subject.
You can narrate literallyanything you know.
You can even narrate in math.
If you've ever asked yourstudent, you know.
Can you explain to me how yougot this answer?
Especially I had one studentwhen he did algebra.
He would he got the rightanswers and he showed nothing.
(45:31):
He showed no work whatsoever.
Showing your work is a kind ofmath narration.
You're showing me the stepsthat you took to get there, but
also explaining it orally.
Tell me how you got this answer, how did you solve this problem
?
But I mean you can narrate andthis is one of the ways where,
if you are teaching differentsubjects, narration might take
(45:55):
different forms.
In science, it might be aperfectly legitimate way to
narrate, to draw a diagram ormake a table with information.
That is a kind of narration aswell.
You know to collect it In.
In some, in things like history, you know drawing a picture or
acting it out.
(46:15):
You know dramatizing somethingthat's happened, setting up a
model.
You know it's not.
These are, you know these arethe kinds of activities that you
sometimes see.
You know in all kinds of schoolenvironments.
You know make a diorama.
That's a kind of narration too,you know, because you're
showing or telling what you know, can narrate, and there's
(46:42):
always a way of sharing ortelling what you know about any
subject.
So you know, one of the thingsthat Charlotte Mason often does
in her schools and CharlotteMason educators do today, is
picture study, which looks like.
I mean, it's a piece of visualart.
(47:02):
So the child looks at apainting.
Usually you know a famous orwell-known painting, a prominent
artist and then she would, justafter they looked carefully at
it she'd have them, you know putit away, turn it over and then
tell what they saw.
But a lot of times kids like tonarrate their paintings in
other ways, and so I've seenLego models set up to look like
(47:25):
such a good idea what they wereseeing in the painting.
I've seen dot like graph paperwhere they graphed a graph
version of you know, either adetail in the painting or or a
whole.
Yeah, my son is sketched, takea graph like that yeah, he's
sketched his perler beads orsomething and make a version of
(47:48):
a painting your son likes tosketch what he sees.
Speaker 3 (47:51):
Well, yeah, he'll sketch, because we do picture
study every Monday and sometimeshe'll sketch or watercolor or
clay.
He's done clay models of someof the paintings and with
Alviary they pick one artist perterm and so he really gets to
dive in, and they even did lastyear one of the terms he did a
(48:14):
sculptor, so it wasn't justpaintings and then he would
sculpt them and I guess that's aform of narration that I never
thought of.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
It absolutely is, and so there's really nothing.
When you really kind of youknow, start thinking about how
you can tell somebody whatyou've learned, what you've seen
, what you know, as I said,whether it's you know by talking
or writing, or drawing.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
In Prenda we have a whole picture study section,
especially for our littles, anda an artist like a people
section.
You know to talk about theartist and very charlotte mason
inspired, and one of my favoritethings that our kids do is just
play like.
Play like you are this painting.
Play like you are thisbeautiful piece of music, you
know, um.
So it's like they'll bring in.
(49:03):
It's like, well, I'm what wasthe other day, uh, they were
doing something aboutcharlemagne.
This was a while ago and theywere like playing charlemagne
and like play like we, they,they had read something and then
they were like acting it out,but not really like acting it
out like a play, but they'rejust like acting like they're
these people and being creative,and and I just thought like, oh
, they're pulling out littledetails of like what they were
(49:26):
just read and then they're likeexpressing that in their play.
I'm like that's a really coollittle callback that shows like,
oh, I, I noticed that detailand I'm holding onto that.
It's very fun.
Speaker 1 (49:36):
Right, and that's exactly what how narration can
come out naturally with youngerchildren.
But even older kids, like yousay, they may want to play at
what they've had, and sometimeswith special needs children, you
will see that that they areprocessing the things that
they've learned and that willcome out in their play.
(49:56):
I have a friend with a specialneeds child who had some pretty
serious speech issues and delaysand so narration, just normal
spoken narration, was difficultfor them, but she was reading
him, I think it was.
She was reading Pilgrim'sProgress and there was one
particular episode in therewhere a couple of the characters
(50:18):
are trapped by falling into apit and she found him in their
backyard and he was digging apit and she realized that he was
in a sense narrating the storyin his play that they had read
from the thing.
And so, yeah, narration,there's really no limits on how
it can be applied.
(50:39):
It's as creative as studentsand teachers want to be.
It can take almost any formthat human communication can
take.
Speaker 3 (50:49):
I love this so much so we could keep talking about
all things Charlotte Masonnarration, but we do need to
wrap up.
So this is a question we askall of our guests.
Karen, so who is someone whohas kindled your love of
learning, or curiosity,motivation, passion?
If you could totally pickCharlotte Mason, it sounds like
she has really inspired you.
Speaker 1 (51:11):
Me.
Charlotte Mason is one.
She has one of the deepest andbroadest minds her thought that
I've ever encountered fromanybody that I've ever read.
It's been a process of mine,ongoing, and I guarantee you I
will never catch up but to readwhat Charlotte Mason read.
(51:32):
And so she has those six thickbooks that she wrote herself,
but within them are referencesto scores and scores and scores
of other books and works thatshe read or was familiar with.
And I've kind of gone behindher and, as I said, I will never
(51:53):
catch up and read the thingsthat she read and I, the more I
read outside of her and I comeback and I read and I'm like
just so fascinated by how wellshe understood and integrated
other people's thought into herbasic, fundamental understanding
.
It's so impressive to see solike charlotte mason's.
Speaker 2 (52:13):
Like 1840s in england .
Um maria montessori.
Like 1870s, italy.
Uh, jean piaget similar timeframe, can't remember the exact
same years but they all kind ofcome together with the same kind
of like deep respect for thechild.
The child is a whole person.
You know, like this connection,like learning, is social
(52:35):
learning, like all of it.
They kind of come to these sameconclusions and create these
different streams where, like, alot of people still hundreds of
years later, like, like, arereally living into these
principles.
Meanwhile, in the united stateswe're inventing public education
and it's like so vastlydifferent and they're just like
these little threads of peoplein the united states who have
held on to some of in thehomeschooling world or in the
(52:57):
classical education world.
It's just like, oh, it is timefor these ideas to like be the
norm already.
So, so we can have, we can havegenerations of kids who are
grounded and rooted and, likereally know who they are and are
thinkers.
So thank you so much for comingon.
Oh, one last question how canlearners learn more about your
work?
Where can we find your booksand things?
Speaker 1 (53:21):
Okay, I do.
I do have a website,caringglassnet just those 10
letters, caringglassnet.
So there's like I have a blog.
I have a blog on there.
I sometimes I honestly don'tupdate that site.
Real often my books are on canbe found on Amazon.
You know everything's availablethrough Amazon and some other.
(53:44):
You know everything's availablethrough.
Speaker 2 (53:45):
Amazon and some other other.
Okay, Well, we'll get all thoselinks in the description so
people can find you easily.
Thank you so much for coming onthe Kindle podcast.
This has been awesome.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
Well, thanks so much for inviting me.
I've enjoyed talking to you.
That's it for today.
We hope you enjoyed thisepisode of the Kindle podcast.
If it was helpful to you like,subscribe and go follow us on
social at Prenda Learn.
If you have a question you'dlike for us to address, all you
need to do is email podcast atPrendacom and you can also go to
our website, wwwPrendacom, andyou can sign up for the weekly
(54:18):
newsletter, the.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
Sunday Spark, the Kindle podcast, is brought to
you by Prenda.
Prenda makes it easy for you tostart and run an amazing micro
school based on all of the ideaswe talk about here on the
Kindled podcast.
If you want more informationabout becoming a Prenda guide,
just go to Prendacom.
Thanks for listening andremember to keep kindling.
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