We're in the middle of a series that surveys what a Charlotte Mason education looks like through the different grade levels,

and how each level solidly prepares your student for the challenges of the next one.

So far, we've looked at the preschool and elementary years.

If you missed either of those episodes, check the show notes for a link. Today, we want to dive

into middle school. And I'll show you how this level gradually and effectively bridges what was

done in the elementary years and what will be expected in high school.

Welcome to the Simply Charlotte Mason podcast. I'm Sonia Schaefer.

Different people have different conceptions of what middle school includes.

So let's clarify what we're talking about here.

For purposes of this episode, middle school will refer to grades 5 through 8. Now when we left our student in 4th grade,

in the previous episode, he was beginning to read some of his school books for himself.

In middle school, he will incrementally progress

to doing more independent reading and with more difficult and longer books. Whereas in

fourth grade he was studying and writing up to one sentence for dictation, over the four years of middle school, he will gradually

increase to writing up to two paragraphs for dictation.

In fourth grade, he was still doing mainly oral narrations and writing one narration per week, either in narrative style or

expository style. Now that challenge will level up over these four years to writing

two and then three narrations per week. And those narrations will also begin to include descriptive style narrations.

Now, let me say something about the purpose of those narrations at this point.

While the main purpose is to help your student assimilate the knowledge from the good living books and ideas, those daily narrations are also

laying a foundation for composition.

Formal composition will come in high school, and we'll talk more about that next time.

...