Tell Me What You Know -CM Principle #14 & 15

14. 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.

15. A single reading is insisted on, because children have naturally great power of attention; but this force is dissipated by the re-reading of passages, and also, by questioning, summarising. and the like.


Acting upon these and some other points in the behaviour of mind, we find that the educability of children is enormously greater than has hitherto been supposed, and is but little dependent on such circumstances as heredity and environment.


Nor is the accuracy of this statement limited to clever children or to children of the educated classes: thousands of children in Elementary Schools respond freely to this method, which is based on the behaviour of mind.~ Charlotte Mason, Principle #14 & 15

When we first began this Charlotte Mason method of learning journey in our homeschool, the act of ‘telling back’ almost felt too easy. We started with AO’s Y5 and Y7Lite; Y5 might even have been considered ‘lite’ as well the way we did it.

But when I actually tried to get Fox to tell me what he’d read, what he remembered from his readings, it was often not much. I discovered that he was zooming through the readings, missing key points and passages. Once we got that remedied {oh, it took some time! and tough love lol} what was difficult for him was to be able to pay attention for longer passages, then narrate.  Lee, on the other hand, was just ‘confused’ by quite a few of the readings so the readings were kept very short. {I’ll admit that I even dropped some books and added in textbooks. That set us back a bit…}

When the kids would ask –again- why they had to narrate what was read {sometimes I’d read out loud, as I still do} when I already knew what was written, I would say, “I want to know what you know.”

As time has gone on and the level of difficulty has increased for both Fox and Lee, I’ve been pleasantly rewarded, not surprised mind you –okay, fine at first I was –, by their increased attention. Also the ability to hold the information longer. Another thing that I like about narration is that the information they recall from the passages isn’t always the same as what sticks in my mind.

What if I were making up questions –true/false, multiple choice –about, say, Julius Caesar, and I recalled vividly when he quickly built a bridge so his army could pursue his foe, but the kids focused more on how he treated his soldiers? Would it be fair to say that they knew nothing about Julius Caesar if they could not answer questions that focused only on what I recalled? No, that would be an incorrect assumption.

Often times when narrating, they start with one point {usually around the beginning of what they read but not always} but before they are done, they’ve made the connections in their minds again and cover more of what they’ve read. There are quite a few times when a narration starts with, “that was a difficult passage to narrate on” because it was a) long, b) had many different factors in one passage, such as many different individuals or events {that doesn’t happen terribly often, so far}, or c) they were not paying attention. I didn’t list those in the order of occurrence. Generally it is the last that is the problem.

Concerning information that I want them to recall, to focus on in the reading, that they might not on their own, I specifically tell them to be paying attention to such-and-such. I’m not terribly big on dates and names but the reasons and circumstances behind such things I am. If a war took place, why did it happen? Who was involved is good to know as well as when but if they only have a general idea of the circumstances but can tell me the more significant details, then I call it a good. What good is it to know that a war broke out in the United States between the North and the South in 1861 but not know why it happened? That is pointless memorization.

That’s not what telling back is.

I included all of Principle #15 but sometimes I’ve seen it shown as only the first part:

A single reading is insisted on, because children have naturally great power of attention; but this force is dissipated by the re-reading of passages, and also, by questioning, summarising, and the like.

I’ve included the rest of it here, as I’m sure you’ll find in other’s review of it as well, not just mine, because it points out that no matter who the child is, they can learn this skill.

Acting upon these and some other points in the behaviour of mind, we find that the educability of children is enormously greater than has hitherto been supposed, and is but little dependent on such circumstances as heredity and environment.



Nor is the accuracy of this statement limited to clever children or to children of the educated classes: thousands of children in Elementary Schools respond freely to this method, which is based on the behaviour of mind.

It’s been paraphrased nicely:

A child educated this way learns more than children using other methods, and this is true for all children regardless of their IQ or background.

What more is there for me to say? One more thing:

Experiences may vary but the results are the same. 

If you are interested in learning more about Charlotte Mason’s methods for teaching, here is a great place to start.