Spelling Wisdom

I just tell them when we come to a new line in a poem if they need help with that.  Right now the only things I hold them responsible for gramatically are the things they’ve learned.  For example, my 11 year old should know to start the sentence with a capital letter and end in the proper punctuation (. ! or ?)  The rest will come in time.  We also talk about where a comma might be based on the pauses he hears in the dictation.  We are currently doing Junior Analytical Grammar too, and we haven’t covered those other types of punctuation.  When we do, I suspect he’ll be able to transfer that knowledge to his dictations.   After he is finished writing the dictation, I read the entire passage back to him so he can look over what he’s written and at that point we insert any punctuation marks he’s neglected to insert.

Here are a few little extra tips on the steps you outlined above.

1. Show the child the exercise and say something like, “Are there any words on this page that you’re not sure you know how to spell?” Then help them go through the words and identify which ones they need to focus on studying. Ideally, there would be no more than about three words they don’t know how to spell. If they’re finding lots, then you need to back off to an easier exercise or wait on dictation. Once they’re studied the words, encourage them to look at the capitalization and punctuation too. It shouldn’t be a huge ordeal, especially if they just studied three or fewer words.
2. If you want to, before you dictate the passage you can do a little “pre-test” (but don’t call it that). You might want to spot check those three words you identified and he studied. Just say something like, “OK, you’re sure you know how to spell ___? Let’s make sure.” And have him write or orally tell you how to spell them. That way you give him a safety net that will set him up for success in the dictation exercise and cut down on misspellings. Also, when you dictate the exercise give only enough words at one time that he can remember and write with no repeats. Each child will be different, and the length of the phrases will change as he becomes more adept. I guess the main thing to remember with this step is that dictation is not a memory feat and is not a race.
3. It’s hard to remember what’s coming up next when you’re interrupted. So i try not to interrupt the child and make him stop writing if I see a misspelled word. The little post-it notes come in very handy to quietly cover up the word and just keep going. Hopefully, if you do the little “pre-test” before the dictation time, you will use very few post-it notes.

Just remember that the goal of dictation in CM is to prepare the passage well enough ahead of time that misspellings in the dictation lesson will be the exception, rather than the rule. So take as much time as your child needs to prepare and study the passage. You’re building habits that will benefit him in the future.

Oh, almost forgot. RE punctuation (Charlotte called it “pointing”): 

“Then the teacher gives out the dictation, clause by clause, each clause repeated once. She dictates with a view to the pointing, which the children are expected to put in as they write; but they must not be told ‘comma,’ ‘semicolon,’ etc.” (Vol. 1, p. 242).

So we use our voices to give clues as to the punctuation, but try not to interrupt the flow of the passage with those directives. I agree with mj that we don’t need to get too stressed about it with younger children. This is a process and they will improve as we go along and as they see certain punctuations used consistently. I especially don’t get hung up on some of those obscure punctuation situations, like poetry. Are there any rules for punctuation in poetry? If so, I haven’t figured them out!