Description

Instructor: Professor Jessica Tancredi

Meetings: This course will meet live once weekly for 10 weeks on Zoom: Mondays from 1-1:45pm PST from January 5th to March 9th, 2026.  All live classes will be recorded in case students cannot attend live.

Prerequisites: Students enrolling in this class should have at least one year of consistent oral narration practice and experience.  This class is designed for students ages 9+ who are ready to transition from solely oral narrations into written narrations.

Live Class: Students will continue to practice oral narration in a class setting.  We will read short tales and stories aloud in class from the building blocks of story (fables, fairy tales, myths, and legends) and practice oral narration as a group.  Students will be encouraged to provide specific details from the story, in the correct sequence, continuing to hone the habit of attention.  We will also practice narrating 1-2 works of art.  Students may be asked to complete a sentence of copy work from the reading during class, or we may do a short dictation lesson.  Students may be asked to read aloud their written narration in class, and it will vary each week which students are asked to share.  I will also introduce basic elements of story such as point of view, setting, characters, dialogue, and descriptive language.  While we will practice basic retellings of the readings, we will also introduce and practice creative narrations, which make narrations more fun and engaging for students!

Homework: Each week students will be assigned to write one written narration on a reading from a living book that they are already reading for their assigned lessons at home (no additional reading will be assigned or required).  This written narration can be done from any subject – literature, history, biography, science, or math – as long as it is a classic work or living book.  Parents will work with their children to determine which reading they will write their narration from that week.  Written narrations must be done from living books.  These narrations should be handwritten.

Grading: Students will receive full credit for all written narrations at this stage; they will be graded for completion rather than skill.  The goal at this stage is just to get students writing narrations consistently.  Students will be introduced to/reminded of some basic grammatical and mechanical skills such as capitalization and end punctuation.  They will be encouraged to incorporate these elements into their writing, but this is not a primary emphasis of this stage.  Students will receive general, encouraging written comments on their narrations every other week (some gentle suggestions may be made or clarification questions asked).

Course Access: This class will be hosted on Canvas. 2 weeks prior to the course start date you will receive an email with instructions on how to enroll in the Canvas course, which is where students will be able to access the Zoom link and class recordings, view and submit assignments, receive feedback, and access all course materials.