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My specific question about dictation is when doing the longer dictation passages, do you dictate sentence by sentence or do you dictate the whole paragraph and the child has to write it all down from memory? Thanks!

I'm pretty sure it's phrase by phrase. So, if it's a longer sentence, you may only dictate part of it at a time. You're only supposed to say each phrase once, and wait till the child is ready for more.

Kathleen

Agreed! You'd dictate a phrase at a time, have the child repeat it back to you, and then write. Then, dictate the next phrase. With my oldest son who is a seventh grader, we do dictate a sentence at a time as he's gotten good at dictation and holding the sentences in his mind as he writes.

Blessings,
Carrie

Along the lines of this, when the child gets something wrong, do you wait until the next day to repeat it or do you have the child do it again that same day? I was reading some Charlotte Mason information recently in a publication and when they talked about dictation, they mentioned the importance of redoing it that same day if there are any errors. That way the immediate repetition allows them to get the correct way stuck in their minds and the double dose for the day helps motivate them to be more attentive the first time around! I can see both the pros and cons of this and definitely it would be dependent on the child as well. Any thoughts on this?

Kristin,

In CM-style dictation, the child corrects any errors immediately while checking his/her work against the model, so as to make sure that the wrong impression is not "seen" for more than a moment. Then we have the child mark any areas of error on the original passage in order to attend to that part of the passage better tomorrow. The next day the passage is dictated again to see if the child has now captured the correct image in his/her mind and forcing the child to attend to those areas of weakness from the day before.

Blessings,
Carrie

Thanks for clarifying this, Carrie! Makes sense! While my child had been correcting it in his notebook right away, I was the one who was marking it in the book. So I'm going to have to make him responsible for that. Thanks!