Often when we think about narration, we envision sitting down face to face with one student.

And that's a valid picture, of course.

But if you have several students of varying ages, how do you do narration then?

Let me give you some ideas.

Welcome to the Simply Charlotte Mason podcast. I'm Sonia Schaefer. There are many ways that you can do narration with multiple children. In fact, narration was used in classrooms in many Charlotte Mason schools around the world. That tells us that the method is definitely doable with multiple students. Here are five ideas that you can use,

in a classroom or in your home. One idea is to start with the youngest. At least six years old. Remember, we don't require

narrations from children younger than six. So start with the youngest and say, tell me everything

you remember from the reading. And then work your way down the line, asking, do you have

anything to add? Do you have anything to add until you get to the oldest?

Now I don't recommend you use this one very often. The older ones catch on really quickly.

No, nothing to add. He did a great job. So you can do a little tweak on that.

By starting with the youngest and saying, tell me what

you remember and then go down the line and each one needs to tell you something that has

not already been said.

This requires them to listen to what was already said and think about other details. Now if you have a lot of students, when you get

up to the upper grade end of the line, everything might have already been told about the

story. There might be no other parts to tell. But that's good, because it requires the

older ones to do more critical thinking. They might tell you how the

decision that this character made reminds them of one in a different book they read. Or they

might tell you where they think this decision might lead. Or they might tell you a character

trait that they noticed in the lead character from a decision that he made.

Another way you can go about narration with multiple students is by using what I call the

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