Help with dictation

The main focus of dictation is spelling. Since your daughter is just beginning dictation don’t worry about punctuation or capitalizing. When she is comfortable with dictation, then you can hold her accountable for capitalization and punctuation, but add one at a time. Tell her ahead of time that from now on you will expect her to capitalize properly for the dictation. That way she knows to pay attention to what words are capitalized. When she’s able to capitalize properly tell her the same for periods or commas. Gradually, you can hold her accountable for any of the punctuation rules she has learned.

A couple of tips:

1. Some moms pause in the dictation when there is a comma, so the child knows there is punctuation there.

2. Some moms just tell their child what the punctuation is.

3. If your student choose a different punctuation than what is in the dictation passage, but the punctuation your child chose could work in the sentence, accept that as correct. Sometimes the punctuation chosen by an author is not the only one that would be correct.

4. Look over the dictation passage with your child when the dictation lesson is over. Have your child compare what she wrote with the passage. Have her notice where punctuation should have gone, what that punctuation is, and if needed, why that punctuation is used. Do the same for capitalization. The point of this exercise is NOT to make your child feel bad for missing punctuation or capitalization, but to help your child see and make the connection of when to use those.