??? about written narrations in CTC

[John'smom]

Just wondering if there was a reason that the manual says 5-8 sentences for the written narration? Is that the minimum and the child can write more? Is it the most to try and make them more concise and to the point in their writing? Thanks for any info.

[LynnH]

I am not sure but since in each guide they are asked to write longer and longer narrations I think part of the reason is that in CTC they are truly in just the learning process with written narrations. It seems at that stage it is more important that they learn to stay on topic, have a good topic sentence etc, rather than tell everything they can possibly think of about the reading. I think I made the mistake when my ds was first starting narrations to expect him to put everything down that happened, when the instructions say for them to pick out just what they see as important or meaningful.

[MomtoJGJE]

Occasionally Jayden will NEED more than 8 sentences to feel like she's written a quality narration. Occasionally I'll make her add a sentence or two because she's just answered the questions in sentence form.

Most times she keeps it in those limits. I think it's to build on the 3-5 sentences they had to do in Preparing. Get them thinking and working up to even loner ones.

[my3sons]

I believe it is the 'quality over quantity' concept. Choosing 5-7 sentences to write and working on making those better through the entire process from start to finish, with careful selection (sifting and sorting CM would say) and through final editing utilizing CTC's Appendix, keeps the focus on quality rather than quantity. I found that it was a harder skill for our dc to choose 5-7 sentences to write than to write lengthier amounts. So, being able to narrow it down to 5-7 sentences WAS the skill to be practiced and improved. In the WG guide, Wyatt just had to write a summary of 5-7 sentences for his Essentials in Writing Gr. 10 assignment. I was so thankful for all of his previous practice with this in CTC! I mentioned in the weekly check-in...
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=14608

These assignments remind me of the difficulty my very talented oldest sister, Cindy, had when upon graduating with her English/journalism degree she began working for a newspaper. Short, catchy, succinct writing was expected, and it was tough! She found it so much harder to work under the constraints of limited space than to write pages and pages. To give another example - Carrie and I actually settled upon the boxes for HOD's daily plans for this very purpose - so that each day's plans would need to be of high quality - but succinct - so mom's like us and kids like ours weren't wading through endless, needless directions. Carrie has become extremely talented at writing within the constraints of space, and I'm oh so thankful! I don't want to have to read a ton to get started with our day, and neither do our dc. Anyway, just thought I'd share these few real life examples of putting to good use the ability to write quality sentences within the constraints of limited amounts of sentences.

HTH!
In Christ,
Julie

[Nealewill]

I think it's to build on the 3-5 sentences they had to do in Preparing. Get them thinking and working up to even loner ones.

It is 3-5 to in Preparing. My oldest DD is very creative and she can write a book about everything that we read. So her skill building has been narrowing down the information and retelling it back all of the important parts. I have found that she has become must stronger in this already and is restructuring her sentences and can usually give a very good and quality narration within the constraints. The only time I will let her add a sixth sentence is if we still haven't written a quality closing sentence and I think that all 5 of her other sentences are needed. But that only happened on one occasion so far. It was when we read about Sparta burning to the ground and the start of Rome. I think we started the narration a little to early in the historical timeline. After I figured out what we did, we were practically finished with the narration so I helped her jump her narration over a few generations to finish in 5 sentences LOL.

[John'smom]

Very helpful. It was what I thought, but just wanted to make sure. Thanks so much.