Aya's Narration of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

April has been a busy month for me but I can foresee now that May won't be that much different. We squeezed in all of the exams and finished it all on the last week of April. I did not want to have anything hanging in my head during the HivePH meeetup so I made sure exams will be done so that all I have to worry about was the grading and submission of grades.

Our exams consists mainly of oral examinations. We have impromptu narrations of stories that we read during the quarter. Review before exams isn't really a thing for us at the moment. I find itnis so much better if the narration that the little kiddo does is as organic as it possibly can. My instruction is for her to read the exam papers and video herself answering the questions. I used to be the videographer during our exams but since we are training her towards independent learning, we give her more and more responsibilities in our homeschooling journey.

This quarter was the first time that I left her by herself and have her complete all the exams with very minimal help from me or her father. I went about my day, cooked lunch, cleaned the house, etc while she did her exams. As you can see by the background noise in her video, everything around her was so chaotic. Which is why I am so happy to see that she kept her focus and attention. There were so many distractions but she did not let those sidetrack her from her task. She narrated through the noise, the winds, the many people talking (it was just me and her father, and some noisy neighbors.)

I think I will be doing this more often. Giving her the freedom to start her exams whenever she feels comfortable. It is also a training for hahit of honesty and inregrity.

As I was watching this part of her video, (she took an 11 minute video of her narrating all the other stories that were listed in her exam paper) I couldn't help but notice how lively and less tensed she was. She was more relaxed in telling the story, because she holds the control of the recording and whatnot. We started reading Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice last February and finished it some twoo weeks after April. We only read this once a week. We would read it aloud, discuss it, talk about our thoughts about the events that happened in the story all in a 15-minute once a week session.

She did not remember 100% of the details of the story but that's not really actually the goal here. I think we achieved that goal with the way she narrated the story. She was full of enthusiasm in her story-telling and I can tell she did enjoy the story from start to finish. I can see that she admires the wit of Portia in the story. When we were discussing this story during our study time, I remember she said "This is one of the stories where Shakespeare did not do anything so tragic like killing or betraying." I liked that she recalled all the tragedy that Shakespeare wrote.

I still have more exams to check because I procrastinated and went out a lot of times this week. But I am still way ahead of schedule so I'm not yet that worried. I still have to get moving otherwise I'll lose my headstart. So todaloo for now.