How much help is appropriate for written narrations in Preparing Hearts?

How much help is appropriate for written narrations in Preparing Hearts?

How much help is appropriate for written narrations in Preparing Hearts? Well, I was recently asked this about Heart of Dakota’s (HOD’s) Preparing Hearts for His Glory (PHFHG). This is a good question that others may have! So, I thought I’d share this question and my answer in this post, hoping it will help others too!

How can I best help my daughter with written narrations in PHFHG?

We are finishing week three of PHFHG, but I find myself helping my daughter with written narrations quite a bit. I am mostly making sure we are sticking to the main ideas and we are fitting the narration in the box of the notebook page. She can orally narrate pretty well, and I write it down as suggested. Then, I work with her to try and cut it down to fit the space. So, I was wondering how much I should expect to be working with her on this? I don’t want to be doing it for her. How much should we worry about it fitting in the space? What do others do if the narrations are longer than the space allows?

Written narrations are a new skill first introduced in PHFHG.

I apologize in advance for my lengthy answer! This is a wonderful question, and it is something Carrie and I put much thought into when first including it in PHFHG. I know each step I am going to describe is included in PHFHG’s daily plans, but I believe a bit further explanation of each will be the best way to answer your question.

Written narrations are an introductory skill in PHFHG, so they are meant to be guided. After you read aloud the history resource, you ask your daughter the questions in the PHFHG guide, and she orally answers them. If she doesn’t know the answers, she can look back in the book to find them. This is not meant to be an oral narration, rather the questions are to draw out the main ideas of the reading. The students’ oral answers are then fresh in their mind.

Students orally dictate just three to five sentences for you to write.

At this point, after the discussion, the student must orally dictate to you only three to five sentences about the main idea of the reading. Keeping the length to only three to five sentences is important for multiple reasons. First, this forces the student to choose only the most important three to five things to include in the actual written narration. Second, due to the short number of sentences, editing is easier. Third, it is easy to insert key missing info if need be. Fourth, we don’t want the parent nor the student writing forever.

Students should read their written narrations aloud to catch any initial errors.

After you have written the three to five sentences your daughter has dictated for her written narration (word for word as she says them), the next step is to have your daughter read the sentences out loud. This is important, as she will hear if something is missing or off and realize she needs to fix it. This will foster beginning editing skills, and it is an excellent habit for editing future written narrations as well.

The questions in the guide will help the student improve the narration.

After she reads aloud her three to five sentences and fixes any obvious things, you ask her the questions in the guide. For the first question (Did you include WHO the reading was about?), if she didn’t include the main character’s name, she needs to fix that by including it. For example, she might have said, “The man was a talented artist.” She should then make the change to be, “Soren was a talented artist.” You’d then move on to asking the next questions in the guide and adjust the narration as needed. This is a quick process, not a long one. Writing the sentences on a markerboard helps make erasing and fixing fast and easy.

Written narrations should be kept short enough to fit in the provided space.

Then, your daughter would finish the written narration by copying the three to five corrected sentences in her PHFHG Student Notebook. They should fit in the provided box, as this is the desired length of a written narration at this stage. Later in the guide, written narrations get longer. Likewise, written narrations get lengthier in each subsequent guide after PHFHG, ending with quite lengthy (as in about a page with multiple paragraphs) in high school. Starting with short written narrations encourages quality over quantity. It also encourages careful consideration of what to include as opposed to endless writing. Finally, it makes editing easier and more successful.

The skill is for students to begin writing short narrations of high quality with proper editing.

It helped me to keep mind that this was not meant to be an oral narration skill; so even though my sons could orally narrate a trove of information after the history reading, orally narrating was not the skill for that day. Rather, the skill was to begin short written narrations of high quality and impeccable editing.

It also helped me to keep in mind this is not intended to be a formal writing lesson with first and second drafts, extensive editing, and lots of writing. Rather, the intention is for the student to sort and sift through what was read and discussed, so the student can choose only that which is most important to include in a written narration, and then that student can finish the narration in such a way that it is short, concise, neat, and edited properly from start to finish. Hope this helps – just keep guiding your daughter using the steps in the guide, and she will be forming excellent written narration habits now and for the future!

In Christ,
Julie