Narration & Journal Entries for Young Kids

Before my kids did formal Teaching Writing: Structure & Style (or knew about topic-clincher ideas), I asked my kids lots of questions about what they read and wrote down their answers. Since I was writing down the answers, I could put proper capitalization, punctuation, spelling, etc. I could even put the answers in a proper paragraph format. This gives them the “what to write” at the beginning stage of reading journals. Then they could copy their own responses the next day.

I believe it is important that our kids first discuss what they read (just like Andrew has kids tell back a paragraph verbally before they write it because they usually write what they say). After the discussion, kids can write a journal entry. This is what DeMille says when he states the key components to mentoring are Read, Write & Discuss. As I write this I am quickly reminded that we may be forgetting the part about discussion when we talk about reading journals. It may be that younger kids (those with little or no writing experience) need to discuss what they read (or read aloud together) before they can write about it. Hey, I can be flexible. I surely don’t take everything I read in Thomas Jefferson Education and implement it exactly. Like DeMille said, “I am the expert on my family” and can homeschool accordingly.

I would never tell my kids to write about what they have read, offering a blank paper, unless they had some idea of writing a paragraph. I am certainly not suggesting that the kids have no idea of what to write. I hated those assignments as a kid. Using questions that probe a kids’ memory should produce a few sentences about what was read. At a young age, 3-4 sentences about Sir Cumference would be fantastic. I think the idea of narration, as described above, is a way to get the kids’ ideas down on paper without intimidating them with a writing assignment. Again, my purpose for reading journal entries is to see what my kids remember and have learned from the books we read, not critique their writing ability.

I don’t know about you, but my kids’ first IEW paragraphs did not have all the techniques included immediately. They didn’t have topic-clincher relationships because they did not know what it was. Does that mean they should not write a paragraph until they have been taught the topic-clincher relationship and can be successful at this topic-clinchers? My kids slowly learned how to write a good paragraph with a variety of stylistic techniques. This took years. It may be that writing a good journal entry is also a slow process, possibly a year or two. As far as our family is concerned, all of my kids still have more to learn about good journal entries . . . just like I do.

I guess I have rambled enough.

Kerry