Regardless of age, I begin notebooking with oral narrations. My goal is for the kids to retain what they have studied, not just regurgitate and forget. So, I begin with oral narrations which train their ears to listen attentively and their brains to begin making connections with the topic or story before putting ever putting a pencil to the paper. What topics to use? This is up to you and your child. I would say begin with a topic they already enjoy. From there, you will likely do a mix of topics they want to do as well as some that are required either by you or your stateโs guidelines. We use notebooking for Bible, history, science, nature study, fine arts study, and literature and try to add new pages to most notebooks every week. This post will outline a more โstructuredโ approach to notebooking. For a less structured tutorial, click here.
ORAL NARRATIONS
It is less stressful for most kids to talk about a topic than to write about it. When beginning notebooking, I ask the kids for immediate oral narrations rather than a written summary or report. A narration is simply them telling you back what was read. Immediate, oral narrations demand they be focused listeners and readers. Narration is a tough skill to develop, so begin in short spurts, maybe reading and narrating a paragraph at a time building eventually to a whole page, then a section of a chapter, a whole chapter, etc. Be encouraging and if you have several children working together allow them to tag-team the oral narration. Once they build confidence in their ability to narrate, they will be better equipped to move on to written narrations.
COPYWORK AND ARTWORK
While developing oral narration skills, begin notebooking with artwork and copywork to showcase the topics studied. Most young children enjoy drawing a picture of their favorite part of the dayโs study. If they are not ready for written narrations, write a portion of their oral narration down for them to copy and add to their notebook. They could also create a caption for their artwork.
WRITTEN NARRATIONS: Sentence Writing
Once oral narration becomes more natural, ask your children what they feel were the most important or interesting 2-3 things they learned from the dayโs study. Encourage them to share their thoughts and opinions as well. Have them add these 2-3 main ideas and opinions to their notebooks using this opportunity to introduce proper sentence structure. Then, as before, they can add copywork or other supporting artwork and graphic elements (maybe maps, photographs, etc.).
WRITTEN NARRATIONS: Paragraph Writing
As oral narrations and sentence writing become easy, ask children to add more details from their oral narrations to one or more of their main idea sentences and opinion statements teaching them the structure of paragraph writing. As kids are learning these skills, I rarely allow them to return to their original reading sources. The temptation to copy or summarize straight from the source is often too great. Instead, I will copy (or have them copy) hard to spell words, names, dates, and other important vocabulary to a whiteboard. We may also do a short outline with keywords to help them remember more abstract topics. My goal is to get what they learned and their own reactions to what they learned into their notebook, not just a rehash of what another author has already written.
DONโT SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF
Writing complete sentences and using proper paragraph structure is important. Hopefully, following a plan that moves you gently from oral narration to sentence writing to paragraph writing as described above will make this a near painless process. But, what about all of the other โstuffโ . . . spelling, grammar, punctuation, stylistic techniques, etc.?
I would highly recommend you not take a red pen to your childโs notebook writing. Personally, I keep a composition book on the side with notes about each childโs writing hang-ups (misspelled words, incorrect use of grammar and punctuation, etc.) and we work on these skills separately outside of notebook writing time. This keeps our notebooking time focused on the content vs. the fear of momโs red pen making for a much more productive and enjoyable writing experience.
The kids will produce more content, remember more content, and have a notebook of โtheirโ learning. If you donโt think you can control your temptation to use the red pen, ask your child to read his/her written work to you instead. Oftentimes, as they read their work aloud, they will find many of their own mistakes. Thatโs an added bonus!
