Know and tell is a pivotal book on narration with multiple student examples throughout, including expectations by age and detailed guidance on how to transition from oral to written narrations and on to composition.
Karen Glass is an AmblesideOnline Advisory member and author of Consider This: Charlotte Mason and the Classical Tradition.
Here’s a description of Know and Tell from www.karenglass.net:
Know and Tell explores some of the reasons that narration is such a powerful and effective tool in education. It also follows the progress of narration, step by step, from early oral narrations to developed writing. It’s full of narrations from real children so you’ll have an idea of what narration looks like at each stage, and you’ll be able to see how children’s narration matures and develops.
Have you been using oral narration and you’re wondering how to begin written narrations? Have your students been writing but you’re not sure how to begin more formal composition? Know and Tell brings you the experience of others who have done this and shows you how you can do it, too. If your children grumble about narration and don’t enjoy it, I think you’ll find the reports of some grown-up narrators in the final chapter especially encouraging. It doesn’t matter if they enjoy it—narration works anyway.
It’s my hope that Know and Tell will give teachers confidence in the method of narration—enough so that they persevere and give their students the strong skills—oral and written communication as well as higher-level thinking—that develop in full when narration is not abandoned.