Continue with dictation in Bigger or move on to Preparing?

[annaz]

We're moving on to Preparing next year, but haven't completed all the dictation in Bigger. (I had issues between the value spelling programs vs the simplicity of dictation. ) This fall I want to use Preparing as written LOL!!!. Do we move to Preparing's dictation; is there "level" overlap between the two programs? Or should I save Bigger's dictation pages?

[my3sons]

How far are you into Bigger Hearts dictation, how old is your dd, and how was your dd doing with it in general? Thanks!
In Christ,
Julie

[annaz]

How far are you into Bigger Hearts dictation, how old is your dd, and how was your dd doing with it in general? Thanks!
In Christ,
Julie

DD will be 10 next month. (we're better late than early hs-ers ) She seems to be doing well in spelling. She's got them all correct up until yesterday "where" vs "were" and "sugar" vs "suger" and we're on Dictation 50. We did R&S Spelling and she'd get all the lists right and we'd do a pretest and skip lessons. All the caps and punctuation including commas in a series have been correct. I can see they're getting more difficult. I don't have a problem continuing in Bigger's dictation if needed. I can pretty much figure out which words she won't spell correctly . So I'm not sure if there's much overlap in difficulty. We're finding some sporatic....some are really easy, probably due to the type of rules that we've previously covered and some are getting more difficult.

[my3sons]

Thanks for answering my questions, annaz. I'd finish out Level 2 since she's still missing a few things and the passages do incrementally build on themselves. Dictation is a skill that builds upon itself each year, so fast forwarding usually isn't a good idea unless it is very obvious that a child is placed in an inappropriate level. If a child was absolutely acing it all every day, I'd consider starting him/her in Level 3 and seeing how that went, but otherwise, when a child is missing things in dictation, even if it's just a few words, it's usually an indicator he/she is appropriately placed and needs to continue to work on the skills in that level. However, those are just my thoughts, you will be able to make the best plan for your dd.

In Christ,
Julie