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My son has started the dictation passages and it is a challenge for him to remember the order of those extra words. (It is a challenge for ME to look away and remember them, lol!!!) Last week, I finally made a sentence out of the words and he remembered the words no problem, but I don't know if that is defeating the purpose? (i.e. - In jest, the pest took a test in the west. Silly, but it worked.) Thoughts?

I don't know if this is "right," but when we did those extra words, I just dictated one or two at a time.

I never use the extra words. I don't see why they would need to be in a specific order. I only dictate the sentences.

I also dictated the words one at a time when we were back on that level. I know some of the more Classical types of dictation emphasis memorization, but that is not the point of CM style narration. I just wanted to make sure that you know they don't have to memorize the dictation passages. They study the passage focusing on challenging words and punctuation and then you dictate the sentence a phrase at a time. In fact at first I dictated just a few words at a time and not the full phrase.

I agree, they aren't supposed to memorize the passage, and the extra words are just for extra help on spelling. I only make them do the extra words if they miss the similar word in the passage.

farmfamily wrote:I don't know if this is "right," but when we did those extra words, I just dictated one or two at a time.

This is what we do in our house too.

Hi mommy22! Dictation is often new to most of us, as we didn't learn to spell that way, so I really have depended on HOD's help to understand how to go about doing it. At the start of the dictation in the Appendix of the guides, there is a really helpful explanation of how to go about doing dictation. It doesn't involve memorization, and it is meant to be read one phrase at a time. The listed words at the end are only part of Dictation Level 2. They can just be read one at a time, as your ds writes them. HTH - but I really am quite impressed with your ds's idea to remember them on his own! What a creative little guy! He will probably find it a relief to know he can just focus on spelling them right though, instead of memorizing them. Thanks for asking, as dictation can be somewhat confusing when we are just starting it!

In Christ,
Julie