Writing Narrations in Second Grade

I know, I know, I am really slacking off. UGH! I am so sick. I am still teaching from the bed. The kids are still doing their seatwork in my room. It is working out really well actually. I can't believe how well they are doing.

My 5yo is already starting to associate letters with the sounds they make! YAY! Also, his counting and math are coming along. 

I have to brag on my 7yo today though. I have been making him write one sentence per subject about what he learned. This is how I am weaning him onto writing narrations. Up until today I just let him write whatever he wanted about the subject. He was doing well and I could understand what he was trying to say but everything was misspelled and sloppy. Then I remembered reading somewhere about another Charlotte Mason mom who writes down key words for her children to use in their narrations. I thought it would help him decide what to write and help him with his spelling. 

He is learning about the cycle of the seasons from the Science chapter of What Your Second Grader Needs to Know by E.D. Hirsch from the Core Knowledge series. Here are his science narrations from yesterday (1)and today (2). 

(Photo missing)

Yesterday I let him write what he wanted. To translate, it says, "There are four seasons. The seasons have their very own plant."

Today I gave him a list of words. 

• spring
• flowers
• seeds
• babies

Just look at the beautiful and well written sentence that followed!!! I told him that was an "A+ job". Of course he has no idea what A+ is, so I had to explain it to him. 

It seems that somehow, by offering a few words to copy, it affected the whole sentence. He spelled everything correctly and wrote so much neater. We will be doing this from now on.

The words that I choose to highlight also make good vocabulary words. They can also be written down and brought up before the reading so that they can be explained. Maybe we can make a game out of it and I can write the words on the board ahead of time and when they hear the word in the reading they can clap or something. 

I wish I could remember where 'o' where, in the logs of books, magazines, conferences, and blogs I had actually found this idea. I would be able to link you over to it. Until then sorry. It is not my very own BRILLIANT idea. It was somebody else's BRILLIANT idea. I just wish I knew who it was. Either way, try it out.