Narration--The Art of Retelling

From

Teaching God's World News

May 31, 2011

The Art of Retelling

The communicative tool of retelling has been used at least since the days when Moses was commanded to repeat the works of God to the children of Israel. It continues even today when parents tell their histories to their own children.

The methodology of narration is important to learning. A student learns to visualize a scene he has heard or read about, to assemble what he knows, to inquire, criticize, organize, select, and even express himself through speaking and writing. The narrator becomes actively engaged in the learning process.

Begin to hold your children accountable for what they are hearing, reading, and observing. Ask them to retell parts of their lessons. Do this after readings in Bible, history, science, and literature. Do it as they solve problems in math and as they observe art and nature.

Several powers of the mind will be activated as students begin really to know what they are reading and observing. Students will be able to develop a clear understanding of the material and will be able to participate in a broad variety of discussions with a certain degree of knowledge. They will learn to reflect, ruminate, remember, and participate in thoughtful discussions.

Here are some practical ways to use the process of narration with your students:

· Begin a new lesson or selection from a book with a review of what the students previously have learned.

· Introduce new vocabulary, background information, and facts before you begin the lesson or the reading.

· Read slowly and carefully though the material once. The students are to read or listen with the understanding that they will narrate or retell what they are hearing. Students are inclined to pay closer attention if they know they will be accountable for the information. In turn, their listening and attentiveness skills will be strengthened.

· Then have students narrate orally the portion read or heard, or the lesson observed. Students can be called upon in turns to narrate the passages or chapters until the whole is told back. Narrate less before you narrate more.

· Narrate point by point, episode by episode, not word for word.

· Do not talk too much, interrupt, or prompt.

· Assign written narration only after a students are fluent in oral narration. You may act as a scribe for younger students.

· Keep a record of written narrations as evaluations of the students progress. Evaluations should be according to sequence, details, and word choice.

· Follow up written narrations with the students reading aloud their work. For younger students, the teacher should read back what the students were told.

· Take time to narrate daily. Make this time calm and unhurried.

-- Maryellen Marschke

A Shock to the System

This was from the February 14, 2011 edition of Teaching God's World Newsletter.

A Shock to the System

BRANDYWINE, Pennsylvania--Teachers who teach that evolution is only a theory "are not teaching science." So says Francis Eberle, executive director of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA).

He is reacting to the results of a survey done by professors at Penn State University. The survey received responses from about a thousand public school biology teachers around the country.


About 60 percent of those teachers said they do not take a strong stand on the evolution/creation issue in their classes. Another 13 percent said they actually advocate creationism or intelligent design in class.


The rest, less than 30 percent, said they strongly teach evolution as fact.


The survey's results disturb those who deny the Creator. Dr. Eberle says teachers who don't push evolution simply "don't understand what is science."


The Penn State profs who did the survey say it's because those teachers "lack the knowledge." They say all U.S. college students preparing to be teachers should be required by law to take evolution courses.


The NSTA is the largest science teaching organization in the world. It says the reason many teachers don't strongly push evolution is because they are victims of "intimidation" and "censorship" by creationists.


The NSTA calls creationism "nonscientific" and "pseudoscience." The LiveScience news service agrees that creationism is not "evidence-based."


The survey's answers contradict the NSTA's official claim that "there is no longer a debate among scientists about whether evolution has taken place."


This is what the LORD says- . . . It is I who made the earth and created mankind upon it. My own hands stretched out the heavens; I marshaled their starry hosts. -- Isaiah 45:11-12


Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker. -- Isaiah 45:9


-- Norm Bomer

Magic Vocabulary Bullet

Received this in the January 17, 2011 edition of Teaching God's World News.


One of the questions I hear often is How do I teach vocabulary? I nearly always hesitate at this point--is this the real question? Am I being asked for a curriculum recommendation? a fount of fresh ideas? Or is the question really What's the magic vocabulary bullet?

Here's the thing: There isn't one. There is no one method or material to guarantee a prodigious vocabulary.


But I do know what vocabulary instruction shouldn't be. It shouldn't be just a list of words, however convincingly touted to boost one's SAT or ACT score. No words meted out on Monday and tested on Friday.


Most students (and perhaps some trained monkeys) can cram 10-20 words into their noggins one day and make at least a passing grade the next. However, good vocabulary quiz grades do not a William F. Buckley make. Those same vocabulary words usually evaporate before Friday night football.


Research indicates that students need at least 15 encounters with a new word before they can apply the word themselves. So students who cram for quizzes don't have time to interact with and learn the words. Vocabulary words become disconnected bits of peripheral information. Real learning gets lost in the shuffle.


So consider these strategies to engage students with vocabulary for real learning:


1) Choose words that students are interested in. Look for these in student reading and writing.


2) Make words fun. Play games like charades, and speak/write meaningful sentences using vocabulary words.


3) Capitalize on roots, prefixes, suffixes, and word families. This allows connections to be made between words like emit/emission, commit/commission, permit/permission.


4) Work with words. Make comparisons; ask questions; paraphrase definitions.


5) Use technology. Email/text/blog the vocabulary words.


6) Read aloud from above-grade-level works. Studies show that reading-including being read to-is the best way to improve language adeptness.


Don't get me wrong. I'm not encouraging The Care and Feeding of Smug Logophiles. And a vocabulary the size of the Old English Dictionary itself isn't the goal. The goal for Christian students is "that in everything God may be glorified" (I Peter 4:11).


God himself spoke to us in words. Not math equations. Not scientific formulas (though he created those too). In words. And through the Word we view the mind of God.


When your students speak or write, people see their minds. Help your students' vocabularies be their best. No magic bullet needed.


-- Kim Stegall

Rethinking Language Error

This came from Teaching God's World News -Oct 25, 2010 edition.


Rethinking Language Error



To grow up with English teachers in the house--two parents and a sister--is to love wrangling over language. We made a team sport of arguing minor points of grammar. Each of us had a specialty: Dad monitored pronoun-antecedent use; Mom addressed comma rules; Sis investigated mistakes with as-as and so-as. And I, I took the road less traveled by concerning possessives before gerunds.


Together we policed the punctuation, usage, spelling, and mechanics of much of the Southeast. No "Cantaloupe's $2" sign went unnoticed; no church bulletin was above critique.


When I became an English teacher myself, I graded papers with gusto--sure that my insightful marks would elicit grammatical perfection. Imagine my horror when my students actually made mistakes!


The alarming trend continued when I had children. My own progeny regularly committed that most egregious of grammar faults: misuse of lie/lay.


Then at some point, I realized (with the Holy Spirit's help, no doubt) that perhaps we all blunder. Perhaps we're all . . . um . . . human. It was life-changing.


Here's how I'm thinking now about language error: Mistakes can be a sign of growth. Listen as little children become aware of verb tenses. They unconsciously realize that the simple past is often formed by adding -ed, (kick/kicked, walk/walked). They absorb this information and incorporate it albeit sometimes with words that do not form their plurals that way. They are assessing, adapting, attempting--all higher-order thinking skills--yet adults often judge the result to be raw error. My favorite example involves a five-year-old who was asked what he thought happened when Jesus said, "Peace, be still." His answer? "Peace beed still," of course.


Nobody masters everything at once. I have a note at my desk from my (then) first-grade daughter. It reads


Dear, Mom
I ♥ you.
, Love
Margaret .S

Can you guess what her class was studying? Yep. Letter form and abbreviations. And while my first reaction might have been to grab my red pen, I took a deep breath and said, "Perfect capitalization! Flawless spacing! All the right punctuation marks!" And only later, "Let's talk about where punctuation marks go."


Recognize stylistic choices as valuable. Allow students to flex style muscle by bending a few "rules." Not every time, but sometimes, a good fragment fits the bill. The same with using passive voice, beginning a sentence with a conjunction, or ending it with a preposition. Just encourage students to communicate the message clearly and be prepared to justify departures from the grammatical straight and narrow.


So I'm relaxing (a bit) about grammar. Now all I have to work on is table manners.




-- Kim Stegall (editor and freelance writer for God's World News magazines, online biographies, and News Now articles.)

The Art of Retelling

This wonderful article on narration came from the 4/19/10 e-newsletter from God's World News.


The age-old communicative tool of retelling has been used at least since the days when Moses was commanded to repeat the works of God to the children of Israel. It continues until today when parents tell their histories to their own children. I was reminded of this methodology--known as narration-several years ago when I read Charlotte Mason's series on education.

The methodology of narration is important to learning. But so is the material that the child is called upon to narrate. This material is referred to as "mind food." The mind rejects dull, dry, tasteless information. So the analogy of nourishment can be used to describe the process of a mind at work--a responsive mind that does thinking, sorting, arranging, selecting, connecting, rejecting, and classifying challenging material, not an endless round of worksheets.

It often is evident in our classrooms that this world of thought remains neglected. When students are called upon to retell something that was heard or read just moments before and are unable to do so, frustration mounts.

However, though the practice of narration (suggestions will follow), the student is able to supply both the question and the answer. He learns to visualize the scene he's heard or read about, to assemble what he knows, to inquire, criticize, organize, select, and even express himself through speaking and writing. The narrator becomes actively engaged in the learning process, for "between attention and expression lies a whole world of thought."

Begin to hold your students accountable for what they are hearing, reading, observing in your classroom. Ask them to retell parts of the lessons. Do this after readings in Bible, history, science, and literature. Do it as they solve problems in math and as they observe art and nature.

Several powers of the mind will be activated as the student begins "to know" what he is reading and observing. The student will be able to develop a clear understanding of the material and will be able to participate in a broad variety of discussions with a certain degree of knowledge. He will learn to reflect, ruminate, remember, and participate in thoughtful discussion, for he has gained "nourishment" from this mental feasting.

Here are some practical ways to use the process of narration with your students:

· Begin a new lesson or selection from a book with a review of what the students previously learned.

· Introduce new vocabulary, background, and facts such as dates and geography before you begin the lesson or reading.

· Read slowly and carefully though the material once. The students are to read or listen with the understanding that they will narrate or retell what they are hearing. Students are inclined to pay close attention if they know they will be accountable for the information. In turn, their listening and attentiveness skills will be strengthened.

· Then have students narrate orally the portion read or heard, or the lesson observed. Students can be called upon in turns to narrate the passages or chapters until the whole is told back. Narrate less before you narrate more.

· Narrate point by point, episode by episode, not word for word.

· Do not talk too much, interrupt, or prompt a person narrating.

· Assign written narration only after a student is fluent in oral narration. The older student may write his own. A parent or teacher may act as scribe for the younger student.

· Keep a record of written narrations as evaluations of the student's progress. Evaluations should be according to sequence, details, and word choice.

· Follow up written narrations with the student reading aloud his work. For younger students, the teacher should read back what the student has been told.

· Take time to narrate daily. A calm, unhurried few minutes is leisure to the student who is facing a world of clamor.

As I pass through the halls in our school, I hear students retell what they have learned of medieval manuscripts, willow trees, the words of Homer, matter and energy, King Nebuchadnezzar, or Treasure Island. The art of retelling--narration--demonstrates to students and teachers alike the God-given affinity "to know."
-- Maryellen Marschke

Teachers as Truth Brokers

This is from God's World News e-newsletter 4/12/10


Teachers as Truth Brokers


Just before he was crucified, Jesus had an eye-opening confrontation with Pontius Pilate about truth. In response to one of Pilates's questions, Jesus said, "I come into the world to testify to the truth, and everyone on the side of truth listens to me." What an amazing statement!

Pilate's cynical response, "What is truth?," sums up the attitude of our current generation. We are living today in a culture which has become cynical and sometimes downright hostile to truth.

According to a recent survey, 73 percent of Americans no longer believe in moral absolutes. Truth is no longer a universal concept. Few people dare testify any longer to knowing the truth, leaving us only with an individual's personal belief in what's true for him.

Living in an age stripped of absolutes--an age where, according to the prophet, "Truth has stumbled in the streets" (Isaiah 59:14), it has never been more important to answer the question, "What are we doing to help our children develop a love for the truth?"

See That No One Takes You Captive

The Bible teaches that we are constantly under the threat of being taken captive by the hollow philosophies of our age. Colossians 2:8 says, "See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ."

These empty principles get a foothold in our children's lives through deception. They appear to be good. They mask themselves as neutral or harmless, but ultimately result in taking our children captive--making them slaves to the world.

The Bible also tells us how to resist being taken captive: "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:5).

Christian teachers unmask the lies that would undermine the knowledge of God in our children by taking every thought captive to Christ. We keep our children free by teaching them how to take every idea captive to Christ. Otherwise they are vulnerable to being taken captive by the lies of the evil one.

Teachers as Truth Brokers

So how important is the role of Christian teachers in helping our children develop a biblical worldview? And will the sweeping technological revolution make their role obsolete in the future? By no means! In fact, it's just the opposite.

The explosion of information available to students today makes the role of the Christian teachers more indispensable than ever. Christian teachers are truth brokers, accomplishing their task by helping students interact with truth in four progressive ways:

 Encountering the Truth

In classes studying math, science, the Bible, or art, Christian teachers help their students encounter truth on a daily basis. They employ a variety of means to stimulate students to search for the truth, uncover it, and understand it in all its manifold expressions in God's creation.

· Engaging the Truth

After helping them encounter truth, teachers spur students to engage the truth with their minds. They devise creative activities that get them working and wrestling with it--activities that magnify the power, beauty, and reasonableness of the truth.

· Endorsing the Truth

Relying on the Spirit of truth to make it clear, teachers encourage their students to endorse the truth with their minds. They commend the truth in such winsome ways that students approve it, submit to it, support it, and endorse it. Thus teachers equip students with the ability to defend the truth as they are confronted by the various deceitful elements of our culture.

· Embracing the Truth

Finally, Christian teachers lead their students to embrace the truth with their hearts. Setting a persuasive example, teachers inspire students to integrate gladly the truth into their daily lives. In this final stage, students are brought to love, treasure, and obey the truth.

In All Things

A child's education may have many commendable qualities that provide an appearance of excellence. But like a house of cards, even the best looking education will come tumbling down if it is not built on the foundation of God's truth. Praise God for the truth. And work daily to foster in tomorrow's leaders a lifetime of treasuring the truth of God in all things.

- Russ Gregg

Mid-evil History

Received this in an email from GWNews.com.

Teaching God's World News                                                            February 22, 2010



Mid-evil History


"Don't know much about history" is the first line of a great song about love. It's also an accurate description of the historical illiteracy among many citizens that enables some politicians to get away with sweet-talking lies.

Over the past 20 years, some exasperated teachers have taken to publishing examples of what their students write. Here from a Wilson Quarterly article are some answers to test questions concerning the Revolutionary Era: "The colonists won the war and no longer had to pay for taxis." "Delegates from the original states formed the Contented Congress." "Benjamin Franklin invented electricity by rubbing cats backwards. He also declared, 'A horse divided against itself cannot stand.'"


It gets worse, by the way, when students turn from American to world history. Then we learn that "The Ramons conquered the Geeks," and "Nero was a tyrant who tortured his subjects by playing the fiddle to them." We're also told that "William Tell shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son's head," and that Sir Francis Drake, with the audacity typical of English sailors four centuries ago, "circumcised the world with a 100- foot clipper."


These comments may be funny, but the lack of knowledge is deeply troubling. One survey revealed that over half of high school seniors failed an easy multiple-choice test about major events in American history. To pass, they only had to get 42 percent right! It's no wonder that many citizens cannot discern the emptiness of government panaceas; they don't know that similar programs have been tried and have failed.


But not to worry: One thing students know (they have been taught to have high self-esteem) is that they are more knowledgeable than their ancestors. As one student wrote, "In medieval times most of the people were alliterate."


Since we now live in mid-evil times-we're on the information highway between Sodom and Gommorah-historical illiteracy is only a symptom of deeper problems. After all, why study history if it, like life itself, is merely a tale of sound and fury, signifying nothing? If there is no God-given purpose to our existence, why not major in meaninglessness?


In an age of relativism, Christians need to keep stressing the basics: that if we are not here to glorify God and enjoy him forever, we might as well worship false gods by eating and drinking and trying to be merry (although only a fool is merry in such circumstances).


We need to keep insisting that there are only two choices, as Moses told the Israelites: Choose life and good, or death and evil.


But let's not overlook limited educational victories that can be won, even in the absence of deeper understandings. The trendy education theorists of the past 30 years have demanded that history be taught in "relevant" ways. That means de-emphasizing names and dates of major events. That means propagandizing about the capitalistic, homophobic, ethnocentric, patriarchal past that we are only now overcoming.


Christians can do a better job teaching both the details and the meaning.


We can do better by realizing that elementary school is the time (the Poll Parrot stage, as Dorothy Sayers called it) to fill the children's heads with those facts of history. Kids love data, and if encouraged in that vein they will have a solid factual base by the time they enter high school and are ready to argue.


We can do better by encouraging older students to debate the ideas that make history, and to learn in the process that ideas have consequences. History, they will see, shows man's sin, man's occasional ability to learn from past errors, and man's opportunity through God's grace, sometimes to get some things partially right.


We can do better by showing that efforts to do away with a societal emphasis on marriage, family and private property are not new; they have been tried before and they have failed before. (Students do pay attention to the effects of failure; one wrote, "Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth. This ruined Booth's career.") The history of past government welfare failure and past government attempts to minimize the role of religion is certainly relevant.


But the deeper question will still remain. Is Christ the Lord of history, or do the intellectual looters of the left have true wisdom? Does it matter if we don't know much about history? Does it matter if we don't know much about God?


- Marvin Olasky, reprinted from WORLD magazine archives