Charlotte Mason's Practice of Narration • Educational Renaissance

Our goal is to spread the powerful practice of narration to as many classical schools around the nation as possible, because of how strongly we believe that the practice of narration improves the quality of student learning. Narration embodies a Christian view of children as made in the image of our Story-telling God. Moreover, it’s one of the most fundamental ways to implement the classical principle of self-education. And it enjoys the support of modern learning science about retrieval practice.

Previously this page hosted a free eBook on “How to Implement Narration in the Classical Classroom”. Because of the publication of A Classical Guide to Narration with the CiRCE Institute, the eBook is now officially retired. However, a helpful companion piece has taken its place: Charlotte Mason and the Trivium: Planning Lessons with Narration. This eBook will help you understand the background for narration as the centerpiece of a larger lesson structure. Then it will guide you in practically applying this lesson structure in your classroom to embody the classical trivium.

We hope you enjoy your free copy of this eBook. If you’re convinced like us of narration’s power, share it with a friend or colleague who might be interested. And after you read it, let us know how we can serve you and the classical education movement better.

Download Charlotte Mason and the Trivium

What Is Narration?

Narration is a simple and elegant teaching tool, in which the teacher exposes students to content, and the students then tell back or narrate that content to the class or one another. This process of exposure and narration gives the student the opportunity to actively engage with the content they are learning. As students narrate, their minds are digesting the material and feeding on it.

The content that we present students with can be anything from a passage of a book written with literary power (whether on history, literature, science or art), to a beautiful painting, to a mathematical process demonstrated on a white board.

The key differences between the practice of narration and other teaching practices are that the students are asked to narrate the content in full (it’s not a summary!) and that narration should occur right after the exposure. An example of this would be reading aloud to a 1st grade class from Beatrix Potter’s classic tale of Peter Rabbit, then pausing in the reading after an episode to call on a student to tell back the story as best they can.

This practice is so powerful because it calls on the student to engage fully in the story as it is being read, in order to be prepared to tell it back. The student attends fully to the content because of an expectation that she must know it. Also, in telling (or listening to another student tell) students solidify and consolidate their memories so that now they know the story.

When we normally read through material only once without this process, the memories aren’t given a chance to form, and so much of the knowledge we could have gained goes in one ear and out the other. Narration locks in the knowledge, and thus is a useful skill for learning almost any type of content, whether story, picture, process or logical argument.

Interested? Learn more by requesting the FREE eBook above!

The History of Narration Video Training Series

Intrigued? Buy the book to learn more or download the Narration 2.0 webinar!

Teacher Training on the Practice of Narration

In addition to reading the eBook to learn what narration is all about, the best way to implement the narration in the classroom is by receiving training in the practice. This is so important because it’s one thing to hear or read about a teaching practice, but it’s another thing to experience it for yourself. First hand knowledge from someone who’s practiced narration with students for a over a decade will be invaluable to your teachers’ success in embodying it in a life-giving way in your school.

In the summer of 2019 Jason had the chance to train the Geneva School of Orlando’s Lower School faculty in the practice of narration.

Here’s what faculty are saying:

Seeing narration demonstrated was the most beneficial part of narration training. It was humbling in that I found that, like my students, I’m also a new narrator. It proved the lesson that the only way to grow in narration is to continue narrating. This has been helpful to know as I now lead my students in narration; they struggle with narration not because no one taught them, but simply because they are new to narrating. Just like listening to a 3 or 4 year old telling a story about a movie they watched or something that happened to them can be a painful process, it can be difficult to follow the stories of inexperienced story-tellers, no matter their age. The training included ideas on how to react to narrations, strong or weak, how to phrase additions and corrections and how to encourage detailed, robust narrations. Like I tell my students, we should care about stories because God cares about stories. As opposed to a list of facts about himself, God gave us a story of how He’s worked in the world. As opposed to creating minds that absorb lists, He made us with minds that soak up stories. He loves stories, he made us to tell them, and thus, we should learn to tell them well. That’s what narration is all about.
Courtney MacArthur, 6th grade teacher at Geneva

Narration has challenged my students to read and listen with a greater attentiveness. Along with this practice, I have seen a great joy grow among my students as they take pride in their ability to recall well and make connections in the stories. In reading The Hobbit, my students are eager to share with their classmates the riddle battle between Gollum and Bilbo, Bilbo’s cryptic conversation with Smaug, and the specific details of the epic Battle of the Five Armies. This daily attention and joy takes each lesson deeper than a simple reading or isolated test.
Alicia VanDerhoof, 6th grade teacher at Geneva