A book review of Know and Tell: The Art of Narration by Karen Glass
Stars: *****
Karen Glass (2018)
Education>Charlotte Mason
217 pages
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Summary: Narration, the art of telling, has been used as a pedagogical tool since ancient times. Over one hundred years ago, Charlotte Mason methodized narration and implemented it in scores of schools in Great Britain. Over the past few decades, educators in the US, mostly in home schools, have followed her guidelines with outstanding results.
This book discusses the theory behind the use of narration and then walks through the process from beginning to end, to show how simply “telling” is the foundation for higher-level thinking and writing.
While narration has grown popular among homeschoolers, it also works well in the classroom. In this book, you will find sample narrations and many resources to help you use narration with your students in any setting. If you’ve been wanting to try narration, but haven’t felt confident enough to rely on an unfamiliar method, this book will give you the tools that you need to make the process easier.
People are narrating every day, and this book will show you how to make that natural activity a vital part of education that enhances children’s relationship with knowledge and allows them to grow into skilled communicators.
Know and Tell
I have heard about narration from watching Charlotte Mason Homeschool YouTubers and have slowly been wondering about it’s use for our homeschool. So I asked for this book for Mother’s Day and received it. I read it in 3 days. It was AMAZING.
First of all it explains that we narrate all the time, in everyday life. I didn’t realize that.
“You attend a meeting and summarize it later for your boss, […]. Your grade-school child returns from camp and entertains you with a detailed account of his group getting lost in the woods […]. Your teenager monopolizes the breakfast-table conversation with a thorough recounting of the movie she saw the night before, […]. These are all narrations – tellings.” – pg 2
I feel like it seems obvious now but I never considered those narrations. The book goes on to explain the history of narrations (it goes back WAY farther than you might think,) how Charlotte Mason introduced it in education and of course, why to use it and how.
Throughout the whole book are example narrations from real children of all ages and stages of narration practice. You get to see the progression from starting oral narrations to written narrations and on (see below.)
Although I thought I knew the basic idea of narrations before reading this book, I learned something I didn’t know half way through. Your child will learn WRITING through narrations. *Mind Blown*
I had no idea narrations evolved into compositions. That you didn’t need a separate writing curriculum or if you do add one, you just need it much later on than I expected. You can even teach 5 paragraph essays from their narrations.
The best part of the book (for me) was the section on how to introduce narrations to older children. Mine are 11 and 14 that will be starting narrations this summer. I was worried it would be too late, but the author explains they go through the same steps, just at a quicker pace. She even includes charts so you can see the suggest progression for those starting early and those starting late.
I don’t often keep books I read but I am keeping this one and have stuck it with sticky notes as well. I’ll be going through it again as my kids move up in narrations and get to different steps or levels. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
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