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Spelling Wisdom…Confused about prepared dictation
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We’re using SW book 1 for my 3rd grader. I’m having him read the passage and pick out the words he thinks he needs time to learn to spell. Now, here’s my dillema. Should it be learned that day, and THEN do the dictation? Should it be learned over a weeks time? A couple of days? Any insight would be great!
I like to schedule a dictation twice per week. So we often prepare one day, then review the next and then do the dictation. However, as my children got better at it, they got so they can prepare one in just a little bit so we often do it the same day. It depends on how long it takes your child to prepare. But yes, I think a couple of days is quite allowable. I don’t actually dictate the passage until I am pretty confident the child can do it with very few if any errors. Were that to take a week, then we’d take a week. IMO it’s the work in preparation that is the real value, and the dictating itself is just the polish on the job. 🙂
We schedule one per week, although I’d eventually like to get to two per week.
The first day, my DS looks and identifies any words that might be troublesome to him. The next few days, he’ll look at the passage (particularly the words he’s highlighted) to try to remember the spelling. Finally, on Fridays we do the actual dictation.
Thank you! I’ve been doing one per week and it seems to be working out for now. Hopefully we can get to two a week at some time.
I think SCM said somewhere that we can get through a SW book in 2 years if we do one or two lessons per week. We started Book 2 about a month ago. The lessons at the beginning of the book are pretty short and easy, but toward the middle and end of the book, they are quite lengthy! Since they are easier now, we’re aiming to do two a week as I think we will only be able to do one per week later when they are really long passages.
Now, I have a question re the SW dictation:
I know we are to put a little sticky note over the misspelled words, but how do we address missed or incorrect punctuation?
I just watched the All-Day Seminar with Sonya, and her response to that question was something like “Since the point of the dictation is spelling you as the teacher decide how correct you require the punctuation”. If it is not a glaring ommission and the spelling is right, I casually point out that they missed the puncuation, they’ll need to watch it on the next one, but I never try to blow the enjoyment of spelling it all right (since that is the point of the dictation). =) It usually helps. HTH
Thanks for that clear answer! That really does make sense! I love how CM methods just make sense!! 🙂
I often will show them WHY they missed the punctuation, too–great opportunity for a lesson in commas or semicolons or whatever. I don’t make them redo the lesson for punctuation, but I do have them correct it quickly before we put the dictation away. You don’t really have to worry about hiding the mistake–it’s not like the confusion that can result from repeatedly looking at a misspelled word–but I do have them correct it to match the passage.
I guess I should have mentioned that while I casually point it out, I do have them correct the punctuation on the paper before we move on. 😉 I just try not to ruin the accomplished feeling by being too “argh” about it. =)
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