🙂 The copybook post was so very popular, I thought would follow it up with a post on dictation.
Copybook allows the student to study a passage, note the spelling and mechanics, and reproduce the piece accurately in his or her copybook. It works particularly well the student is copying a passage that he or she likes, and here I am thinking a passage from a favorite book or a funny poem. My kids LOVED copying funny poems, like (for my boys):
Willy found some dynamite.
Didn’t understand it quite.
Curiosity seldom pays-
It rained Little Willy for seven days.
Dictation, is one step up from copybook. In this case, you read the passage, your student writes the passage down. Dictation feels more like a testing situation, and so you need to prepare your student for his first instances of dictation. Note my mantra, which I learned from a classical school teacher back when my oldest was in 3rd grade homeschooling: I expect my students to do well–those things, which I have taught them well. — Nothing else.
The homeschool mom (who is often inexperienced–though with the best of intentions) may or may not realize that she has not sufficiently instructed her students in what she expects them to do. The result is frustrated mom with expectations, which are not met, and frustrated students, who are not articulate enough to explain why they did poorly. Mom may be tempted to suspect lack of cooperation, when in fact it is lack of preparation of immature minds and hands.
So, back to dictation. There are two kinds, studied dictation, and unstudied dictation.
For beginning students go slowly and build for success. That would be my mantra for all of homeschooling. NEVER suspect a student of lack of attention, lack of detail— instead make your instructions clear, ensure that your student knows what to do, and then expect him to do it. (It is always tempting as a parent to infuse guilt in to the homeschooling situation, but it is rarely productive to do so, since it creates learning hurdles which are rooted in emotional issues, not in intellectual issues.)
I would start instruction on a favorite, short copybook passage that the student is familiar with. Instruct him that you are going to dictate 2 sentences from this piece. Talk him through the piece. Note together where the capital letters are, where the periods and commas are, how difficult words are spelled, and then leave the student to study the passage one more time.
When you dictate the passage, go 3-4 words at a time. Speak slowly, repeat the sentence, and then let the student write it down. Once he has your 3-4 words down, repeat them again and have him check his sentence to make sure he has those words and all those marks down, then go onto the rest of the sentence. Dictate punctuation, and in the beginning, also give hints to difficult spelling or punctuation. We call this dictation with hints. Over time, you will wean the students of hints, and over time, you will no longer indicate punctuation either.
(Note, if you have a 3-4th grade student who cannot muster the attention to go through the steps I mentioned above, shorten it, even if you have to get down to just ONE WORD. Shorten it, and prime him for success. Think of rewards that would help keep his attention long enough for TWO words next time and so forth. IF you have a student with whom dictation is currently impossible. Abandon ship, return to copybook and try again later. NEVER doggedly set out to fight a battle you cannot win. As with food, toilet training and all schooling, the kid is in charge of his mind and his body, and you can only offer the ‘water’ you cannot make him drink.)
The goal is to work up to the entire Gettysburg Address by 6th grade, where you dictate long sentences with zero hints, and the students can replicate the entire thing correctly.
I would say in 3-4th grade (depending on the student) most dictation is studied, i.e. likely a passage the student copied in his copybook earlier, and you give hints, especially commas. Do not feel bad about hints. You are reinforcing good writing practices. Dictation is not a testing experience, it is still a learning experience. Your student is learning to visualize words in his head before he puts them down on paper. It is a valuable experience (not a test!!) that is part of the many many steps a student has to go through to get to full research paper writing skills. Every time you remind him there is a comma in the passage, you are modeling good comma usage, and he is noting it.
Perhaps as one means to increasing punctuation competence, you can dictate a passage INCLUDING THE COMMAS, one day, ask the student to study that passage, and dictate it without the comma hints the next day.
Do not make dictation too too long for the student. Writing mechanics is not the most inspiring intellectual work. Sweet and short and daily, or sweet and short and weekly goes a long way if you have a regular routine for doing dictation.
For 3-4th graders, two sentences per day would do beautifully in instilling good writing mechanics habits. For 5-6th graders, perhaps a slightly longer passage 4-6 sentences once a week (say, we always do dictation on Fridays, or something) would do wonderfully. Whatever you choose to do, make it a regular part of your weekly routine for YEARS (yes, I said years!!), and you will see the pay offs in the long run.
Dictation and copybook are to writing what doing one’s scales are to piano playing. They create proficiency in the writing mechanics, in a way that essay writing does not. So many skills and thoughts are required in essay writing and in poetry writing and in other creative writing, that the students do not have time to focus just on the mechanics of writing. Hence, dictation and copybook.
The best writers were taught by breaking the skills into groups and learning each skill in isolation (letter formation, hand writing, spelling, copybook, dictation) and then over time gradually the student was taught how to put all those skills together into a beautiful persuasive and expressive writing style.
So to summarize, at Classical Writing, we teach dictation in the following steps
Step 1. Beginning dictation – a well known studied passage, 1-2 sentences per day, dictate 3-4 words at a time, give hints on punctuation, capitalization and difficult spelling.
Step 2. Intermediate dictation – a studied passage. 5-6 sentences per day, dictate to the first clause is done, give hints on commas still.
Step 3. Advanced dictation – unknown passage, a paragraph or more. No hints.
Tailor these steps to the needs of your student. Since dictation is not riveting, know your student’s limits, make it doable, and reinforce with accolades, so this is a pleasant, quick and enjoyable-for-all part of your day and your student’s day.
🙂