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My 10 year old, fifth grade son is doing Preparing with extensions this year. Since he has not really done dictation previously but is in general a good speller, I started him on level 3 for dictation. We started school 2 weeks ago and have technically finished 11 days of school, but not that many of Preparing as sometimes I have split some of the work between two days. He is doing school 5 days per week and my goal is to get him done with a week in a week, but we're not quite making that yet. With dictation, since it takes such a short time, we're just plugging along (almost) daily. Today he finished #7 because we did skip it a couple of days when we were "behind" in other things. So far he has not made any mistakes or found it difficult at all. I'm following the directions that are given for studied dictation. Do you think it would be best to just keep going or try moving him up to Level 4? Today he asked me, "When can I do Level 4? This is really easy!" I told him that he would do some of Level 4 toward the end of the year if he keeps moving along as he has been. He seemed very disappointed but said, "Ok. This is just kind of boring because it's so easy." It takes us less than five minutes per day for him to study it, me to dictate it, him to correct it and me to double check he did it right.

Thanks for any input!

Hi there,

I had the same opportunity with one of my dc that you are having with yours. Carrie recommended at the time to simply jump ahead about half way through the level and see how if that is a better fit. If that's still too easy, then move to the next level or tweak it from there. I'll see if I can find the original post and link you. Blessings to you!

Ooh, I found it....
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2701&hilit=+dictation#p20287

I was going to say what Florence said. We have the opposite issue (my 6th grade son is a terrible speller and needed to go back to level 2), but we have just skipped around some in order to find where he fits best. I even went through and had him spell some words to see how well he did with those to help me make my decision where to put him. He ended up starting at Lesson 30 in the Bigger Hearts manual, Level 2.