questions on dictation

[holyhart]

As we are gearing up to get started on the 2nd half of Bigger for my dd's 3rd grade year we will be moving from spelling lists to the dictation.

I think I understand most of the idea of how to do the dictation but I still have a couple of questions.

I first have my dd study the passage. Then after a few minutes when she says she is ready, I read it to her either sentence or phrase at a time and she has to copy everything exactly as written. She then has to correct her own work. Right? That's the jist of it?

So for the questions....what do I do with the words I know or suspect she will spell incorrectly ahead of time? She is not a natural speller as some children are. She doesn't even do very well on the words we've done on the lists after we are done with them (not all the words but some). I don't think she will have as hard a time with the grammer and punctuation as with the spelling. Also, if she has spelled the word incorrectly, isn't she then taking a mental picture of it wrong now? Or do I stand over her and have her erase as soon as she starts to write it incorrectly?

I would love if someone could give some starter advice! Any little tricks would be welcome and helpful!

If there are other links on this already that would be helpful too. I did a search on "dictation" and there were 163 PAGES mentioning dictation which was simply too many for me to sort through!!!

[LynnH]

I am not sure where the link is, but Julie once posted some good tips for narration and I have implemented those. What I do is I have my ds study the passage and write on the white board any new words, or tricky words, or places where there is punctuation. I make sure he writes these correctly. Then I read him the passage and have him do the dictation. I wouldn't stop her and correct her as soon as she starts to write it wrong because what I have seen is that my ds looks back over it after he writes it and will often self correct it because he knows it looks different than what is in his brain from studying it. Does that make sense. Only after he thinks he has it all right do I let him correct it with the key. Also pay attention to the indenting if there is any. I didn't pay attention to that for a year until Julie said something about how her ds would sometimes not indent the passage.

[momtofive]

I don't know if this is exactly as we are supposed to do it, but when my son makes a mistake, I have him write out that word three times under the dictation passage in his notebook. I find that it seems to fit in with the whole taking a mental picture idea, and doesn't really take that much time or effort to do. Usually the next day, he gets that word right!

Blessings as you begin your year!

[moedertje]

Here is a quote that I found embedded in on of Carrie's previous posts. Hope it helps you.

,

One more CM-style dictation tip is to have you, or your child, write any words she thinks may be a problem from the passage (ahead of time) on a marker board with a black marker (to further place the image of the correct spelling in her mind). Then, she can let you know she's ready for dictation after that.

Also, when we first started dictation, I would have my older son count capital letters and punctuation marks in the passage to make sure he noticed them all and then repeated them all in his re-write.

Blessings,
Carrie

Success!!