I need help with the whole narration/writing philosophy...

[Shasta Mom]

we are in our first year of hs, and have used wtm as a guide. My ds who is 8 is too advanced to just recite back to me and have me write it, but I find it a battle to get him to write it. I don't want to overload our academic day....right now, we do about 2 1/2 hrs academic, and 1 1/2 hrs music. I wonder if I'm missing the whole boat here........any advice?

[KAR120C]

DS sometimes balks at writing out full sentences of summary, but he can make notes and then speak from them, and I count that as narration... And honestly as much as I thought at times that he would never write, the more I required, the better he was at it.

Hope this helps!

[Shasta Mom]

You've got to do a bit every day and in a year you notice some improvement....How old is your ds?
Carol

[KAR120C]

You've got to do a bit every day and in a year you notice some improvement....How old is your ds?
Carol
He's also eight... his age and his "grade level" are so mismatched that I rarely mention it... <blush>

Writing only really cemented for him around his 7th birthday, and he's still not a huge fan ;) But it was probably the month he had to do his whole science fair project that he really made the most gains. It was a huge project (1100 words!), he copied them all by hand, and by the end he was so much faster and neater! Since then he has slid back a little (didn't do as much writing over the summer, for instance), but made great gains, too, whenever he put in the time. And now I can pretty much just ask him to write a paragraph... pretty much. LOL

[ELaurie]

putting a lot of skills together; remembering the information, selecting what's most important, organizing one's thoughts, forming letters, spelling the words, using proper punctuation, grammar, and capital letters . . .

My ds 8 does a great job with oral narrations, but I haven't required him to put all of these skills together yet. Even if your ds is able to do it some of the time, he may need your help to get it all down on paper. Perhaps writing part of it for him would help; or letting him write part of it, and copy part of it.