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I have a question about the prepared dictation that I am doing with both of my boys, ages 10 & just turned 9. I don't think I am doing it right at this point.

When my oldest did level 2 dictation he could do the entire dictation in one day. He would study the new words, look at the dictation, and then I would dictate it to him one phrase at a time. The first part of level 3 was the same way. At some point during level 3 dictation I started to have him do one phrase a day. This means that a single dictation took longer than the day it was scheduled. The reason was that spelling isn't his strength. There would be enough 'difficult spelling words to study in each phrase' that one phrase seemed about right to learn. Then my second son started having the same thing happen about half way through level 2. Once again I started doing a sentence one day, and then the second sentence as prepared dictation the next day.

This isn't correct; is it?

Am I supposed to be doing the entire dictation in one day? What happens when they become quite long? Do they study all of the dictation at once?

I am a bit confused on how this is supposed to look as the dictations lengthen.

Thank you!

You do the entire dictation passage in one day. That is part of the increasing difficulty is that the passages get longer. However you can still read it to them a phrase or part of a phrase at a time and they write that and then you dictate the next phrase. If you need to read even just a few words at a time you can do that, but you want them to do the entire passage without error in one sitting before moving on. I hope that makes sense. To study the passage my ds writes all the bolded words on the white board and at first he would write the word that came before punctuation so that he could "practice" that also.

LynnH wrote:You do the entire dictation passage in one day. That is part of the increasing difficulty is that the passages get longer. However you can still read it to them a phrase or part of a phrase at a time and they write that and then you dictate the next phrase. If you need to read even just a few words at a time you can do that, but you want them to do the entire passage without error in one sitting before moving on. I hope that makes sense. To study the passage my ds writes all the bolded words on the white board and at first he would write the word that came before punctuation so that he could "practice" that also.

Thank you LynnH.

So if I understand correctly they may study a dictation two days, or more, before having it dictated?
As they lengthen do they typically take multiple days?

I have been using the index card method from Beyond to study the words they say are difficult to spell. It seems to work well.

It sounds like I need to wait to dictate when they think they can do the entire dictation exercise. Correct?

You do one dictation paragraph per day. They should not take more than one day to do a whole passage. However if they get anything wrong in a passage they should do the same one again the next day.

If they are having to repeat multiple ones per week then they are not in the right area of dictation and need to go back. I give my kids about 5 minutes to look over it, reminding them of things to look for, occasionally pointing out tricky things (commas, apostrophes, spelling, maybe capital letters). Then I take the book away and say it one phrase/sentence at a time. They repeat each one back to me and write it, then I say the next one.

When mine get to the point they are missing them over and over then we take a break of a few weeks and then begin back at a point before they started missing.

Thank you. This is very helpful. It sounds like the method is exactly what we did when they first started it, before it became difficult. This makes sense to me of repeating if necessary, and backing up for review if they are having to repeat too many dictations & missing too many words.

Thank you.