Notebooking
Query: There are awesome notebooking ideas in the lesson plans (and a document on marking up a text). Is this notebooking interchangeable with written narration, counting towards the eight for the week? That’s how we have done it, more or less, and they fill in orally during our daily meetings to go over independent subjects. Is this correct?
In School Education, on p. 180, Charlotte Mason talks about other ways that books can be used aside from basic narration. She states, “But this is only one way to use books: others are to enumerate the statements in a given paragraph or chapter; to analyse a chapter, to divide it into paragraphs under proper headings, to tabulate and classify series; to trace cause to consequence and consequence to cause; to discern character and perceive how character and circumstance interact; to get lessons of life and conduct, or the living knowledge which makes for science, out of books; all this is possible for school boys and girls, and until they have begun to use books for themselves in such ways, they can hardly be said to have begun their education.”
The notebooking prompts provided in the lessons for 7th grade and up are based upon Mason’s suggestions. Most of the notebooking activities require a student to look back at the text as needed to create a concept map, diagram, or other visual representation of the reading. Other notebooking prompts ask open-ended questions that encourage students to reflect on the reading and make connections.
It is important for a student to first orally or silently narrate the reading section by section or as a whole before doing the notebooking activity. This gives students a chance to process what they just read and put that information into long-term memory. The notebooking activities are helping students engage more deeply with the material and usually have a narrower focus than the narration. To answer the question—yes, notebooking would definitely count toward the number of required written narrations for the week.
Notes:
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Trivia Question:Who took over the House of Education after Mason died?
Answer: Parish
