PRINCIPLE 14: NOTEBOOK EDITION
As knowledge is not assimilated until it is reproduced, children should ‘tell back’ after a single reading or hearing: or should write on some part of what they have read.
Mason believed you did not really know unless you could reproduce what you know, in some form or fashion. Have you ever thought you had a grasp on some concept or skill. Then you try explaining it to someone else, and find you really only had the vaguest idea?
Maybe you are trying to tell a friend about the movie you watched last weekend, and you forget important details, mix the sequence of events, and even start confusing two different movies. You start to wonder where your brain was for those two hours!
This process of ‘reproducing’ knowledge is what Mason called narration. It begins with the first formal lessons at age six, with a child orally retelling a painting he has seen or a passage that has been read to him once. So, you might read one of Aesop’s fables, and then your ask your child to tell you the story. This requires complex thinking on his part, as he must recall the plot, sequence, and details. And this will not be a mere parroting back of what he has heard; most children will have plenty to say about what they thought of the characters, whether they approved of a character’s actions {Mason said that children love to ‘deal damnation round with a hearty good will’}, and what the story may have reminded them of, in their own experience or in another story. This process of narration requires a much higher order of thinking than short answers, true and false, and multiple choice, and the result is highly individual. And yet, narration is well within the abilities of even the youngest child, who will often tell about their day or a strange dream they {might have?} had—unprompted, with impressive vocabulary, and even more impressive volubility.
Notebooks are a form of narration, an opportunity for a child to encounter knowledge {whether in a book or a science experiment}, to process what he has gathered from the experience {which includes synthesizing new information with what he already knows, with what he brings to the experience}, and to make decisions about how to reproduce this knowledge—from scratch, basically, without all the prodding of detailed directives and very specific questioning. In a narration, the student is the one who needs to make decisions on what points to include in his essay, what artifacts he wants to sketch in his BOC to best illustrate a certain era, or how to arrange a scientific diagram so that it makes sense.
The work of education, Mason believed, belongs rightly to the student. All education, she said, is ultimately self-education; no one can learn for the student; it is personal and internal experience. The more work the teacher or the curriculum is doing, the less work the student is doing and the less he gets out of it.
Notebooks give the child the chance to reproduce what he actually knows, and is more meaningful way to assess your child’s learning.
• vocabulary notes and narration for Platero y yo •
December 9, 2014