"Do you have anything to add or correct?"

That is the Question.

Photo by Johnny McClung on Unsplash

In Charlotte Mason circles, we understand narration is the. thing. We know we need to keep the main thing the main thing and that thing is narration. Though narration methods can be somewhat of a melee of personal preference, learned experience and “we’ll just give this a shot today,” my tendency has always been to just keep it simple. I ask them to tell back. This method has always worked for us but sometimes it leads to wildly inaccurate narrations and I feel a deep stress around correcting. Do I just correct? Oh my, do I dare to re-read? Do I just let it go and leave a misunderstanding hanging out there? Do I push them toward a correct understanding with leading questions? And then my brain starts to implode on itself and I do something that involves all three options and feels a bit jarring, like I’m telling them what to think, and then we go to the next reading. It has never occurred to me that there could be a better way.

But, last weekend, I was able to do a CMI school training with Lisa Ector in which we got to be students and I learned a very simple phrase, “Do you have anything to add or correct?” This is something that I have never asked before and I knew immediately that I would implement it as soon as I got home because it resolved my angsty feelings towards correction by removing the ownness of learning off of me and placing it back on the children.

Following the simple narration directive of “Tell back what you heard,” I am now asking the other kids in the room who are also engaged in the reading, (siblings or class mates) “Does anyone have anything they want to add or correct?”  This takes me out of the driver’s seat and allows me to listen a little bit longer to what the kids are internalizing for their own purposes. Yesterday, as I was reading with my 6 and 8 year olds, I realized that the opportunity to add or correct became a natural course-corrective for the “I can’t remember.” answer that comes to me a lot at those ages. The steady but gentle push offered in the opportunity to piggy-back off of someone else’s narration helps to build confidence in memory without nagging or reminding. I thought it might create an environment of competition but because it is monitored and student initiated, I have realized that the results are vastly positive.

But what if the narration is still wildly inaccurate?

I have decided to ask a series of questions to myself:

Does their understanding of this passage effect their knowledge or understanding of God?

Is this knowledge something that is required for further understanding of the book’s topic?

If the answers to one or both of those questions are yes, then I have decided to pick from a few different options is giving my corrections.

1.       I offer my own corrections by stating simply, “I have a correction to make….”

2.       I come up with a way to initiate conversation around the misunderstood topic during our discussion time following narration. We don’t always discuss but when this happens, I try my best to make time for more conversation.

If the answers are no, then I move on-read on with the confidence that unless they assimilate their own understanding, my tap-tap-tapping at it won’t necessarily make it stick.

Putting this process and these guidelines in place the last few weeks has been such a simple thing but has lifted a burden off my shoulders that I didn’t even quite realize was there. And the more I implement it, the more I like the results.

Cara Williams 2024