Ep 12 | Narration: Tell It Back to Me (Principles #14-15)
It’s narration week! I mean, really, what’s more Mason than talking about narration?
(Actually, a lot of things. You have to talk about all the things.)
But let’s get to it! What is narration? Why does it happen after a single reading? What if you have a lot of students narrating at once? How do you narrate a piece of music? Is it the same thing as a discussion?
…what if the kid’s narration was…subpar?
We’re going to talk about all of it and more! Let’s go!
Video Resource | Let’s get practical.
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Principles #14-15: As knowledge is not assimilated until it is reproduced, children should 'tell back' after a single reading or hearing: or should write on some part of what they have read.
A single reading is insisted on, because children have naturally great power of attention; but this force is dissipated by the re-reading of passages, and also, by questioning, summarising, and the like.
Acting upon these and some other points in the behaviour of mind, we find that the educability of children is enormously greater than has hitherto been supposed, and is but little dependent on such circumstances as heredity and environment.
Nor is the accuracy of this statement limited to clever children or to children of the educated classes: thousands of children in Elementary Schools respond freely to this method, which is based on the behaviour of mind.
_________
I really feel like each episode is another monumental step in this season. We are actually learning our stuff. We are homeschooling moms, guys.
And so, today, we’ve made our way into a monumental, foundational part of the Mason pedagogy. If you were to grab a homeschool mom and ask her to tell you anything she knew about Charlotte Mason home education, she’d definitely say narration.
Or maybe nature journals.
For a long time, that was my primary association with Mason instagrammers and my primary reason for avoiding Mason herself. Because, well, my nature paintings are…a work in progress.
But narration! Today we get to talk about narration.
It’s funny to me, that as I work through many Parents’ Review articles, that much of what’s said about Mason pedagogy today was clearly being said back then too. Take this quote for example.
“Narration? Oh yes, that’s what they do in the PNEU schools, isn’t it? The children just read a bit and then narrate and the teacher does nothing much except listen. Lessons don’t have to be really prepared, because everything is there in the books the children read from.”
Whenever I try to explain a Mason lesson plan to anyone, they basically respond with: but when do you teach?
So let’s get into it. How does learning happen with narration?
Here’s the thing about kids: they love to tell what they’ve seen or heard. I could easily walk around my house without saying anything and my children would regale me with stories about the birds outside that morning, the picture book they looked at before lunch, the thing they heard walking down the block, the thing they saw four years and seven months ago that made them laugh.
Kids have wild imaginations and it’s fair to say that how they tell something is what they saw in it. They show what impressed them.
And this is an important thing about narration.
Another quick thing about narration, before I forget, is it should not be required in the early years before formal school. Even if you have a natural, lively narrator, don’t start asking for narrations.
But anyway, narration is a behavior of the mind, it’s the power of the mind to recall knowledge gained from a single reading, viewing, or hearing in such a way that it leaves a deep impression on the mind that remains for a long time and is never fully forgotten.
Or, as Mason said, narration is a magical creative process.
Now a few things to get in order before we dive into this.
Children are to narrate every subject but for ease of my speaking and your hearing, I’m not going to say “what a child has read, seen, or heard” throughout the episode. I’m just going to say read, but you know that I know that children narrate art pieces, music pieces, and so on. We know, but I’m just going to say read.
We also need to note now that Mason wrote into the fifteenth principle that narration was not something only for clever students but for many students, thousands of students in the PNEU, so remember this is a behavior of the mind, and that your child will learn to do it. But learning can take time and for my Patreon-only Bonus Five addition to today’s episode—I’m just going to go ahead and make the plug now—, I’ll be sharing troubleshooting ideas for what to do when you’ve got a new student struggling with narration or you think maybe, just maybe, that was a bad one. You can join us at patreon.com/thecommonplace.
So narration is really not something you’ve never heard of before, even if you’re totally new to Mason. In fact, this is something you’ve done. Narration is what people do. We read a great book or watch a great film and we are compelled to go tell someone about it. We remember best the old memories we tell as our go-to stories. We even, when given directions from a kind stranger, immediately begin to repeat them audibly to ourselves to make sure we remember them.
Telling back is both natural and necessary for knowing. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to really practice the art of narration. When you retell something in your own words, you’ll often realize what you didn’t pay attention to before. It’s that moment when you ask, “Ugggh, what was that guy’s name?” Or “Did they go here or there next?” Or “Gah, I can’t remember which side of the painting that was on.” When you narrate, you employ every part of the mind, which is how it creates such deep knowledge.
Here’s how it works in the homeschool.
After you’ve given your introductory remarks and captain idea, you read a section of a book, listen to a piece of music, or look at a piece of art.
You only read once because narration requires the power of attention and if you re-read something, a child will not pay full attention. Who really focuses when they know they can hear or see it again?
After a few minutes, ask your child to tell back what you read.
When a child narrates, limit interruptions. In fact, Mason says to be careful to “never interrupt” a child who is narrating. But what if they’re stumbling, you may ask. No, Mason says let them get into their groove—and this can happen over a narration or a year—because they will get in their groove. She had the whole PNEU student body backing her up on this.
Now, after a child narrates, allow the next child to go. One, they’ll fill in missing pieces but two, they’ll correct what the first child got wrong. You don’t have to be the person to do this, usually, if you have multiple students narrating.
Make sure to discourage children from parroting what was read back to you, and encourage them to use their own words.
That’s the basic gist. That’s how you narrate.
But, of course, we all have more questions than just that. So, let’s run through some common ones.
Why do we only offer a single reading?
This one’s easy. The habit of attention is dissipated by repeated interactions. Part of narration is training the habit of attention because you can not learn anything if you don’t first command your attention. And, only the child can command their attention. In order to grow into people who are able to perceive quickly and easily, our kids have to pay attention and have the ability to assimilate knowledge.
Neither of those things happens when a child is offered repeated readings. This is also the reason why we don’t do comprehension questions or summarize for our kids. That’s repeated exposure to material and, the Parents’ Review writers said, that makes them lazy.
Okay, next one. Why does it feel like I’m not doing anything?
I get this. Really, even when I’m preparing my pre-reading things, I look at my quick notes on a Mason lesson and marvel at how different it looks from what I experienced in school. No listed objectives, no comprehension questions, no…well, it seems like not anything. Introduce. Read. Narrate. Discuss.
But actually, narration in lessons requires a degree of preparation and wisdom from the teacher. You need to know if there are unfamiliar names and words that will cause a child to lose their attention or concentration during the reading. Those few minutes of interruption can derail an entire lesson, so while the quote about the PNEU sounds like teachers aren’t doing much during the narration, that’s precisely because they’ve done what needed to be done before the narration in their own preparation and in introducing what was really needed at the beginning of the lesson.
What else can throw off a narration, you may wonder? Well, our own little comments and insights. Now, I say that knowing full well that a Mason mom will panic over a statement like that. Ah! I can’t speak! That’s not what I’m saying nor was it what Mason said. If you as the teacher want to add interesting thoughts or examples, share them at the beginning to spark curiosity in your child, or, possibly even better, share them at the end in those few extra minutes that round out and end the lesson.
Next common question: what if my child is struggling with the amount of material?
Try reading less at once. The trick with narration is making sure there’s enough to a reading that a child can find a real idea and have enough to work with in giving a complete, personal narration. In the early years, it’s best to narrate after each reading and if needed, a child is free to narrate after each paragraph while they’re learning how to do it.
Here’s one I’ve asked before: how is narration different than discussion? Don’t we get to talk about the ideas in both?
This, uh, discussion has been a thing for awhile. I was reading another Parents’ Review article where the writer destroyed the argument of the day that the teacher must question to make the children think. Apparently, the phrasing at that time was “the art of questioning is the whole art of teaching.”
Now, asking questions is an art—not every question is a good question—and discussion has its place in the homeschool. We often need to gather parts into a whole, to direct efforts, and such. And, I mean, isn’t great discussion part of the dream for us? Having fantastic discussions with our children around tables full of good food and full cups? So don’t think you shouldn’t ask questions.
But do children need questions to think?
To be really scholarly and philosophical right now, I ask you: what is thinking?
I’m not kidding! What powers of mind evidence thinking? What output? What do we think the point of the formal lesson is?
This is where we see the difference between narration and discussion.
When you narrate, you make outside knowledge personal. You bring it inside. Engaging every power of the mind—things like imagination, connection, memory, understanding—you tell back what you’ve read, heard, or seen in a personalized way that assimilates and creates knowledge. Narration is about embodiment, about incarnation, about mental transfiguration—in a sense. You make something yours; you truly understand it.
Which is why, so many older Mason students, can recall with feeling and clarity, something they’ve read seven years prior. It’s like they experienced what they learned and it’s a part of them.
Discussion doesn’t require imagination. It doesn’t ask for visualization or engage the child’s mind in a relationship with the knowledge. It’s categorical, argumentative, exciting, and needed but not before narration.
But when you do get to discussion, what kind of questions can you even ask?
I’ve shared in a bonus five in Patreon before about asking good questions, because, yes, you do need to ask questions. But questions, for Mason, happen every few readings and always after narration. Appropriate questions are things like character judgment questions: Was this person a suitable man for a president?; comparison questions: How do we do things differently today? Compare this place with this place; or something like relational questions: What would you have enjoyed about this time period?
Do you see how those questions require a child to have knowledge of a person, a life, a place, a culture? To be able to place themselves in something otherly? To make judgments with knowledge of the situation?
Questions like this encourage deeper thought and allow a child to perceive, not just parrot.
And for a last one, how do you do narration with multiple students in one room?
Okay, first, never allow a repeated narration. If one child has covered the first three paragraphs, another child can add to their narration—possibly things they’ve forgotten—but they cannot narrate the exact same things already covered.
Consider starting with the youngest. Older students will be able to fill out a beginner’s narration.
Surprise the students by stopping mid-narration and moving to the next student. Go in a different order so they don’t know when they’re up.
If needed, begin with those more shy students and allow their small, quiet narrations without interruption until they work their way up to full narrations.
Don’t let one or two kids take over and hog the narrations.
And lastly, although this one when I found it in a Parents’ Review article really surprised me, divide the kids into teams where one team asks a question of the other. A correct answer scores a point for the team. Incorrect answers lose two points. Beyond the fun and natural pressure to pay attention, you’ll find at the end of this, there’s plenty for discussion over the narrations given.
Now, this is really just the start of narration. I’m going to cover the troubleshooting tips in the Bonus 5 in Patreon today but I’m also going to be sharing about the many ways you can narrate on YouTube next week. Narration is really a magical creative process that is a must in the Mason pedagogy. We’re just scratching the surface, and honestly, if I can send you off with something to practice in your homes, it’s that you narrate this month. Take your Mother Culture, your leisure reading, your stories of the day, and practice telling them back. It’ll give you a clear picture of what your children are learning to do, yes, but also it’ll give you that mental sympathy needed to be the philosopher, guide, and friend we’re aiming for in this season.
That’s principles fourteen and fifteen.
So, I’ll see you guys in a month.
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