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Copywork vs Dictation
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If you were to use only one of these, for a 10-yr-old who has always struggled with spelling, which one, why, and how specifically would you do it?
I am trying to incorporate quite a few CM approaches in our learning, but at least at this time I don’t believe we’ll have time/energy for both of these. I am hoping that by using one we can focus both the spelling and handwriting into one outlet.
Spelling Wisdom worked wonders for my 10 yo dd who was a horrid speller until last year when we began Spelling Wisdom. I do have her do copywork as well, but at times I have used her Spelling Wisdom passages as her copywork, so it can serve two purposes! I can’t recommend Spelling Wisdom highly enough.
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The beauty of this is that you can incorporate so many language arts skills in one thing here. Choose a short passage for your child to copy, have them copy it neatly and accurately. That takes care of handwriting and paying attention to details. Spend a day or two discussing what they’ve written, perhaps practicing some words that might be difficult to spell, pointing out things like why something is capitalized, or when and where to use a comma, or perhaps a word that is new to them. That covers vocabulary, punctuation and spelling. Then use the same passage for dictation to allow your child to put to use all the language arts concepts that you’ve covered. This can be done in about ten minutes a day and makes a pretty easy transition to CM methods.
I use Spelling Wisdom as both copywork and Dictation. My children copy the lesson one day and study it, then the next day, they study again and we do the dictation of it.
Copyowrk 2x a week; Dictation 2x a week
Is there a book that has all of this in it that I can use, or do I need to find things to use as copywork and dictation?
I saw a site that a lady took Primary and Intermediate Language Lessons and made them into a workbook form so you can write directly on the sheets. It looked pretty good, but I am not sure if will cover everything that we would need to cover (copywork/grammar/dictation/spelling) or if I would need to supplement.
Here is the site:
We do both. For copywork and dictation, we use Spelling Wisdom. For all the other LA areas, we use the ILL in worksheet format.
My 10yo does copywork three times a week and dictation twice a week. For copywork, we just started using Draw and Write Through History…We’d been using free copywork from the internet, but I like how this is tied in with our history lessons and my DC love the drawing lessons. For dictation, we’d been using Dictation Day By Day (it’s on Google Books), but I’m planning on switching to Spelling Wisdom soon.
We copywork the Spelling Wisdom passage until they know it enough to do it correctly – so that varies, usually once or twice a week. We try to do ILL daily, sometimes I cut the writing pages short and finish the next day. We still don’t spend more than 20-30 minutes total. (My dd are 11 and 12.)
I am wondering, with all the notebooking pages for history, nature, composers, artists, poets, etc, if also doing copywork and dictation will cause a major stress. He really doesn’t care to write, anyway, and so now I am concerned what areas are more important for him to write, and which ones he can do something else….
Any advice on this?
I am leaning towards Spelling Wisdom if I can find ways to cut back on the handwriting elsewhere.
Recently I revamped/reevaluated my ds’s lang. arts (and math) schedule(s) and had to really look closely at our week and not have too many writing exercises in the same day.
You could alternate between oral/written narrations, notebooking pages, etc. to not overwhelm your ds. For example, today my 10yo was expected to write in his notebook for Jack’s Insects (which he loves, btw, thanks SCM). He was to write three explanations in the beginnning of the lesson. Well, the third came along and he asked if he could give an oral narration. I said he could. It was sooo good….I would’ve missed it if I’d have made him write it out. Then I had him write in the area for narrating that he gave an oral narration. The next page did not ask for too much so it wasn’t a big deal. He really enjoyed it and now knows that it need not be burdensome.
It’s okay to create your day/week/month to challenge, yet, not overwhelm your ds.
HTH
We use oral narration a lot her. I even have them do some oral answers for questions in ILL and PLL. However, if I presume spelling issues, I will have them write and/or spell it orally. It is actually harder I think to spell a word aloud, so if they can do that, I expect they can do it in written form. I have also mixed it up with letting them use the large whiteboard in our dining room. Or a personal-sized whiteboard. Anything like that to mix it up can help too.
Oh and we use ILL and PLL (different children) along with copywork. We use copywork books that I buy efiles of from CurrClick. They have many subjects, but for our sons I have used the animal ones and character ones. They have different handwriting styles, and they are very reasonably priced. Once I purchase, I can copy them again and again for future children. I bind them and it makes things simple for me and DC. The publisher is LightHome Publications if you are interested in checking them out. HTH
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