Narration is the act of telling back what you learned, or what you remember. And in the act of verbalizing what you learned you solidify that knowledge in your mind. 

Although the act of telling back what you learned is not new, Charlotte Mason was the first one to put a name to it and fine tune it to be a core teaching method in her schools. How she discovered this powerful teaching was laying in bed one night trying to go to sleep, she had insomnia, and explaining to herself what she read that evening (the book was Emma by Jane Austen, in case you were wondering). 

What find so encouraging is that Cognitive science and research studies support this method.  in the book Make It Stick they call it elaboration and retrieval.  

Elaboration is connecting past ideas to new ideas, and adding some of your own original thoughts.

Retrieval is retrieving past knowledge. Delayed narration is a form of retrieval.

Interestingly, researchers found that telling something back in your own words, either to yourself or another person, is much more effective than rereading a passage. And its even more effective when you connect it to something else and retrieve that knowledge again when some time has passed.

Narration is a combination of all these effective learning tools:  to tell something back in your own words, make connections to past knowledge, right after reading and again  in the future. 

This makes narration the Swiss army knife of teaching tools. It can be used for all ages and all subjects. 

Why is it so effective? Why should you begin utilizing narration in your home?

“The value of narration does not lie wholly in the swift acquisition of knowledge and its sure retention. Properly dealt with, it produces a mental transfiguration. It provides much more exercise for the mind than is possible under other circumstances and there is a corresponding degree of alertness and acquisitiveness.” 

 Let’s go over what happens in the mind when your child narrates: 

• Your mind goes over what happened in the chapter or lesson. It puts information in chronological order. 
• It must pick out the most important or relevant information. It analyzes and summarizes.
  Peter Brown, author of make it stick said “People who learn to extract the key ideas from new material and organize them into a mental model and connect that model to prior knowledge show an advantage in learning complex mastery..”
• It looks for connections to other subjects and past knowledge.  It synthesizes. “The more you can explain about the way your new learning relates to your prior knowledge, the stronger your grasp of the new learning will be, and the more connections you create that will help you remember it later.”  Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

So much is going on in your child’s mind – summarizing, analyzing, synthesizing, etc. 

When children narrate they are doing the work of their own education. They aren’t listening to a teachers  narration (aka a lecture), then guessing what the teacher thinks are the most important things to remember (multiple choice quizzes). 

In her last volume on education Charlotte explains why narration is so important and powerful: 

 “As we have already urged, there is but one right way, that is, children must do the work for themselves. They must read the given pages and tell what they have read, they must perform, that is, what we may call the act of knowing. We are all aware, alas, what a monstrous quantity of printed matter has gone into the dustbin of our memories, because we have failed to perform that quite natural and spontaneous ‘act of knowing,’ as easy to a child as breathing and, if we would believe it, comparatively easy to ourselves.” (A Philosophy of Education, pg 99)

Narration will not only serve your children well during their school years, you are establishing a habit that will serve them well their whole life. You are teaching them how to learn and hopefully you are gaining an important habit for yourself. 

How Do I Use Narration?

Some things to keep in mind before beginning:

• First, don’t force narration before age 6-7. Your child should have years of seeing it modeled by parents and older siblings. They can join in when they want, but never require it before first grade.
• Second, when they are old enough start small and simple. Begin with something easy to narrate, like fairy tales or folktales and read a paragraph  before asking for a narration. Work up to a page, a few pages, and then a whole chapter. 
• Third, don’t treat it like a quiz. This will turn your once-interested kids into deer in headlights. Simply ask your child “tell me the story in your own words” or “tell me about…” or “tell me something you learned.” Remember:

“This, then, is the purpose of narration—a purpose which we would do well to keep constantly before us. There should be no misconception. It is not a teacher’s device designed to find out if the child has completed a given task. It is not an act of verbal memory. It is a process which makes all the difference between a child knowing a thing and not knowing it. Narration is, indeed, like faith, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. It is the method whereby the child assimilates what he reads.”

Also,

“By the way, it is very important that children should be allowed to narrate in their own way, and should not be pulled up or helped with words and expressions from the text.” (1/289) 

• Fourth, oral narration should be the primary way to narrate, but isn’t the only way to narrate. One of the graduates of Mason’s schools grew up to be a teacher and contributor to the parent’s magazine. She said this of narration: 

“ Perhaps it would be wise to remind ourselves that narration can take many forms. It can be oral or written reproduction of the whole or of part; it can be comparison of, or contrast between, some person or event occurring in the reading and some person or event of which the children already have cognisance; it can take the form of drawing, the writing of notes, or the making of a summary; and to your minds will occur other forms which narration can take.” (Daisy Golding, Knowledge and Narration)

Here’s an interesting little tidbit: learning styles is most important when people are expressing what they learned. A subject is best learned in the medium most natural to it. But people still express their ideas through a medium most natural to them. Anno’s China, Spain, etc is a narration of his experiences. Other people have described their travels with the written word, like Richard Halliburton’s travel books.

Here are some examples of what narration looks like: 

• Oral narration after any lesson
• Recording in notebooks (nature journal, science notebook, Book of Centuries, etc)
• Drawing a scene from history or literature (blank comic pages are great for kids who love to draw)
• Drawing a specimen from nature study with notes
• Drawing the steps of an experiment
• Making a clay model of a specimen from nature
• Making a pot or vessel model of from ancient history
• Creating a stop-motion of a scene from history
• Newscast of an event from history
• Composing a song on their instrument

It should be noted that you won’t have time in your lesson for a child to do many of these. That’s why Charlotte said to require an oral narration after the reading, but children can work on another type of narration in their afternoons and weekends. Drawing narration is the exception to this; I require drawing narration for many subjects during morning lessons. 

And when kids are in 4th grade they begin written narrations. Oral narration is the foundation for written narration. When children have a few years of telling what they learned, they are ready to write about it. They will start out as a few sentences, but as your child gains strength and skill, these too can become longer and more creative. For example:

• Poetry
• Composition, like persuasive and research  essays 
• Newspaper articles
• Letters to the editor
• Character Sketches

So here’s what a history lesson would look like:

• Before you begin reading you ask your child to remind you what happened in the last reading. 
• You or your child read the chapter. For younger kids or struggling narrators read a page/section.
• After reading ask them to tell back in their own words.
• Discuss their questions, look up answers

“All children show the same surprising power of knowing, evinced by the one sure test,— they are able to “tell” each work they have read not only with accuracy but with spirit and originality… They see it all so vividly that when you read or hear their versions the theme is illuminated for you too. (Philosophy of Education, p. 182)