Name: CHEC Rocky Mountain Homeschool Conference
Start: 2025-06-12T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-06-14T23:59:59-05:00
Location: Denver, CO

Tagged: boys, copywork, dictation, writing

This topic has 4 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 9 years, 6 months ago by winzfam10.

Viewing 5 posts - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

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November 5, 2015 at 10:29 am
MrsB
Participant
This question is concerning my three middle boys – 11,9,8. My 11yo is now doing a co-op where I’m with him during class. I’m noticing how slow he writes, and how his spelling is awful. I also have a 17yo who doesn’t spell well, and has horrible handwriting. I guess I’ve never done well with handwriting, copywork, etc. I always used the excuse that boys don’t write well, etc, but most of my son’s co-op class is boys. Many of them write quickly, well, and its obvious there is a discrepancy.
Anyway, where do I start? It seems easy enough, but these three boys all need practice daily. Do I start the 11yo on copywork too or prepared dictation? We did a little prepared dictation last year, and he did well.
November 5, 2015 at 2:01 pm
Tristan
Participant
We do our prepared dictation passage as copywork earlier in the week, so I would say you could do both with the oldest. Copywork it for a few days while studying the spelling of the words and then do it as dictation for the last day.
Another idea – have him start a writing journal where most days you hand him a writing prompt or a whole page of them to choose from. On those days he sets a timer and writes for 5 minutes. The next time he writes he can pick up where he left off with that prompt or start a new one. When 5 minutes becomes easy increase his writing time to 7 minutes, etc. We usually do this writing journal idea for a month each year, just to get the kids in the swing of writing for a certain amount of time. And DON’T correct anything in this. It’s just for getting ideas out and getting the hand muscles used to working on writing for concentrated spans of time.

November 5, 2015 at 2:18 pm
HollyS
Participant
My DS (age 10) is a very slow writer! Copywork and dictation have helped with this. We do copywork 3 days per week and dictation 2 days per week. Currently he is using Print to Cursive Proverbs to learn cursive and Spelling Wisdom for dictation. I time our copywork lessons so they only write for 5 minutes each time. Dictation probably takes us 10 minutes each time (for 2 students).
For writing narrations, I have my DC type them out on the computer. They prefer this over writing it by hand. It’s helped get them more focused on the content of what they are writing instead of the mechanics of writing.
November 5, 2015 at 4:41 pm
Wings2fly
Participant
For spelling, we use SW for dictation with the 11 yo and Sequential Spelling with my 8 yo. They both do some copywork too. So I suggest your 11 yo do both. My 11 ds had slow writing last year. I gave him a gel ink pen, Pentel Energel Deluxe .7 mm metal tip, to use this year. You cannot erase it, so he learned to struck through it once for a mistake and write it again. We sometimes use every other line to write on to leave room to fix mistakes. But I think before this, he was spending too much time erasing to make it look perfect. He always pressed real hard, too, because he likes it to appear dark on the page. The pen he uses has dark ink, with a light touch of the hand. He still uses pencil for math and his journal though.
November 12, 2015 at 2:16 pm
winzfam10
Participant
What if I have a 14yro son that has a terrible time with spelling? Would I start him with Spelling Wisdom 1? I am wanting to do this with 5 of my 8 children. Trying to wrap my mind around how that would look. I have trouble juggling everything and am sad to say I sold my Spelling Wisdom in haste and was going to just order Spelling workbooks, but have put it off for a few days now… Any suggestions?