Digital Narrating

Narration is a term used by Charlotte Mason. 

It is basically telling back what you know.

We are fairly new to this practice but I do my best to work it into most of what we do in our learning time.

In the summer when preparing for this coming school year I purchased a digital voice recorder. I initially bought it for creative writing and/or Eagle to get his ideas out verbally.  

One of the problems I find is multi-tasking multiple children's needs throughout the school day. I'm sure I'm not alone in this. It seems that at the moment I need to spend time with Zazu (7) of his narration, Alba requires some TLC, or Eagle needs to run something by me. So using a voice recorder I'm able to kill two birds with one stone. 

Just recently I decided to pull out the recorder to give to Zazu for his narration in history. I just told him to tell back what he could remember from our reading into the recorder. I prompted him a few times to jog his memory (because I knew he knew). He pressed pause when he needed to think and used the recorder quite well, I found. I played it back for him to hear his narration. And as a bonus he finds it fun to use also.

Then I took the digital file and I transcribed it, and popped it into his notebook. He can also add images to it from the web, or drawn and coloured by hand to make it personal. Or of course, leave it as is without any illustrations.

It's been a great tool for Zazu (7) to narrate all on his own. 
As, it's taken the pressure off of him to present what he knows to me. Because sometimes there's an off day and he just needs to get alone with his thoughts.

This is the one we have

Another idea

• An older student could upload the file onto the computer for a multimedia presentation, using an application like Keynote (Apple) or Microsoft's Movie Maker.




Happy (digital) Narrating,
Mo