Scaffolding Written Narrations

or stewarding Know and Tell

First, a little backstory.

Before we started homeschooling, I was pulled to the AmblesideOnline website. I poured over the booklists and clicked on all the links (there are a lot of links), but when we started homeschooling our first year, I bought a shiny boxed curriculum. Why? Language Arts. I could not wrap my head around it. This combination of reading, narration, dictation, and copywork seemed so foreign to my experience. I felt I needed a separate curriculum for each element or somehow, I was going to fail my child.

But our experience with the box curriculum turned out to be painful, and I found myself back on the AmblesideOnline website. I read a few blog posts (in particular this one) from a mom who told me that, truly, I didn’t need a writing curriculum. I knew that if I had any chance of doing this and doing it well, I needed to pick something and stick with it. I knew if I always thought there was something brighter, shinier, and better, then I would constantly be changing things. As a young mom, this didn’t excite me, it exhausted me. I wanted steadfastness in this journey for me and my children. I wanted to “know what I was about” (maybe this is one of my favorite things Charlotte Mason says, I use it in many of my posts). I wanted to shimmy down on my little nest, doing the next right thing, and find myself surprised by contentment. I wanted to do the work and reap what I sowed, so I decided to take the plunge into implementing Charlotte Mason’s philosophy to the best of my ability. I’ve never looked back.

Fast forward to 2023, my daughter is now in college, and every class requires a presentation (oral narration) and a writing assignment (written narration). I have watched her get by wonderfully. When a rather difficult professor sent her feedback that her paper was “incredibly well written, and the best paper out of all three of her classes” our journey with narration flashed through my mind. We’ve never used a writing curriculum, and I knew many, if not all, of her peers had been exposed to one from an early age. How did we get here?

I have thought a good deal about this. In many ways writing is a packaged deal in Charlotte Mason’s philosophy. If you’re reading quality literature, getting at living ideas, having grand conversations, and enjoying the science of relations the writing comes from the reading and the thinking. Those daily written narrations are important, too. But that doesn’t mean we as mother-educators can’t play an active role in this process. There is a gem of a book in the Charlotte Mason community called Know and Tell by Karen Glass. What Karen Glass has done for us in writing this book is hand us a map to help guide us with oral and written narrations. In fact, when I got my hands on it, I promptly turned around and made a three-page outline to follow. I highly recommend doing the same. I plugged my daughter in where she was on the outline and followed it through to the end of her senior year. Before Know and Tell it felt a bit like being at sea in the dark. Once I made an outline, I had the sea legs for our journey, I could see where we were going, and it is what I have been using ever since to scaffold narrations for my children.

It is this scaffolding process I would like to share with you today. 

Before the start of every term. I use the Know and Tell outline I made to evaluate where my child is, and then I get some sense of what we need to be working on next. I have yet to do this for our upcoming year; so, come along with me as I look at where my boys are in the writing process, and what narrations will look like for them when we start lessons next month.

My youngest will be 10 when we begin Year 4 this year, and we will be starting written narrations. As I look through my outline, I can see the key points I want to keep in mind as we begin. This will often prompt me to go back and re-read some of the book also.

I am going to follow the same sneaky scaffolding I did with my other son when he was this age (shown below). When it was time for him to begin written narrations, he despised the act of writing; and while my youngest doesn’t despise it, we do have some special needs I need to keep in mind. A full notebook page could cause a lot of anxiety for him, so I will begin his written narrations in a smaller, 4x8 notebook. When that is full, I will grab the next size up, then we will move to a standard spiral notebook. This way his narrations can naturally grow with the size of the page.

That’s the simple plan for my youngest. I will check back in with the outline after the first term, see that we need to progress to two-to-three written narrations a week by the end of the first year and see if he’s ready to go from one to two a week.

My older son will be 14 and beginning Year 8 this year. Looking at the outline I consider where he is and where he needs to be going.

Where he’s at:

• Typing all written narrations

• Beginning the second term last year we started the editing and rewriting phase. When my daughter reached this place, I saw dictation and grammar study were redundant, so we dropped them to allow for more time with the writing. (Don’t tell the CM police.) I did the same thing last year with my son. I picked one written narration from the week (he did one daily), and we would work on editing it during what used to be the grammar and dictation slots in his weekly schedule. When he was happy with it, I would have him retype it.

• My son continues to do creative narrations weekly in the form of poetry, mostly. He also does quite a bit of “keeping” (especially with his science notebook). Last year I also picked a few prompts included in Know and Tell (p.111-112).

• He keeps a commonplace book.

• We point out and discuss good writing when we encounter it.

Where we need to be going:

• Read On Writing Well. I held off on this last year, so we will begin it this year. I will encourage him to follow the advice in his own writing.

• Begin introductions and conclusions. At the beginning of lessons this year I will have my son read pages 127-128 in Know and Tell, and we will begin the process of adding these to his narrations.

• Continuing weekly editing (working towards him polishing his work before giving it to me), creative writing assignments, and keeping a commonplace book.

This will be the plan for my older son. We’ll spend all year here growing in our writing before he starts high school next year. Below are photos of some of his written narrations from last year. This is the same son from the notebooks above. You can see we picked one to edit. There has been a lot of growth!

This process, as you have seen, only takes me a bit of time to work out at the beginning of a term, but it has been so helpful in keeping us on track with the writing process—in a very easy, organic way. And the best part? It works. Know and Tell is a resource that allows us to stand on the shoulders of giants. Dust off your copy and steward it well.

Mariah Kochis 2023