Dictation is a great way to teach any student who has mastered the basics of copywork. If your child has generally mastered the beginning concepts of punctuation, grammar, and spelling then he/she is ready for dictation. Copywork helps students to see and experience well written sentences. Copywork activates the visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning centers of the brain and helps with memorizing the general rules of language. Once a child shows proficiency with copywork, it is time for dictation. I, personally do not attempt dictation until my students are in the fourth grade. I'm sure there are students who may be ready earlier and some that may need more time with copywork. Moms, you know your child best. If dictation causes tears and frustration, back up to copywork for a few more weeks or months, then try again.
Dictation is a tool which requires a student to operate their listening skills, while accessing their memory to find and then retrieve necessary information so that it can be applied to a passage of quality literature. A child who is practicing dictation is hard at work! This is not an easy skill, but the benefits are tremendous. When a child practices dictation, he is training his brain to remember and organize the rules of language arts so that he can access them later. Essentially, he is building his own filing cabinet of language arts learning. During a dictation exercise the student processes what he hears, accesses his filing cabinet, finds the needed rules and then applies that information to the passage being dictated. Then the student writes it all down.
It is very important to understand that dictation is an advanced skill. It takes regular practice to master it. If this is your first time to try dictation, I recommend choosing a short passage of no more than a sentence or two. Be patient and compassionate with your student while following the steps below.
**Don't give your child a pencil until you are finished with #2.
The Steps of Dictation
1. Let your child read the passage you will be dictating. First, have them read it aloud. Ask them to point out any words they may not know how to spell. Study those words for a few moments. Then ask them to pay special attention to the punctuation in the passage. Then have them read it one more time, this time silently.
2. Ask your child to close their eyes and listen to you read it aloud this time.
3. Tell your child to pick up his/her pencil and write while you slowly dictate the passage.
4. Give your child a copy of the passage and have them compare their work with the original. I guide my children through this process. We look at each word, one by one, checking for spelling. Then we look at their passage to examine it for punctuation and grammar.
5. If there are misspelled words, we circle them and immediately correct their spelling beneath the passage and we add the misspelled word to our spelling list that week.
6. For punctuation errors, we review the punctuation rule broken and then the child corrects it. I do not have them rewrite the passage. Rather, I have them use common editing marks. We use this chart which shows all editing marks. On the following day, I have them rewrite the passage from their corrected copy.We do dictation two to three times a week in this manner.
Charlotte Mason purists will often say that a teacher should only read the passage one time before the child writes. They reason that this forces the child to listen. I have two children with learning disabilities and this never worked for us. In fact, it caused much frustration. So rather than push my children into exasperation, I chose to give grace and came up with the above method. My children did extremely well with this method – and both of my graduates are excellent listeners and proficient writers.
Grateful for grace,
If you would like to learn more about teaching language arts in this manner, I recommend the following resources:
The Three R's by Ruth Beechick
You Can Teach Your Child Successfully: Grades 4-8 by Ruth Beechick
Language Arts the Easy Way by Cindy Rushton.
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