Writing/Dictation

Both of my children are pretty good spellers, but that’s not necessary for written narration. The point of narrating, whether oral or written, is for the child to tell back what he knows, which cements the idea in his mind. We don’t require children to speak in grammatically correct sentences when they give oral narrations, do we? Well, I don’t anyway. I think that skill comes with age and maturity, as well as understanding when formal grammar is introduced. Also, oral narrations can be very conversational, and even the most critical of grammar nerds (myself included) doesn’t always use the most proper grammar in casual conversation. For written narrations, the goal is to develop composition skills, learning to organize one’s thoughts on paper. This doesn’t mean the child has to be a great speller. I don’t “correct” anything on my children’s written narrations. If I see that a child is consistently forgetting to capitalize the word at the beginning of the sentence or failing to use periods or quotation marks incorrectly, I will casually point it out, reminding them what the correct thing to do is. But since my children have had very little formal grammar instruction, I can’t expect them to know what they have not been taught. They notice good grammar usage and spelling in their reading, and this naturally translates to their writing most of the time. For me, the goal of written narration at this stage is to simply encourage written narration–the retelling of what they know in written form. Now, as more dictation and grammar is taught, I will expect their narrations to reflect what they’re learning. I know CM works because I have two children who can write narrations with correct spelling and grammar about 75% of the time. I certainly don’t want to discourage their narrating by marking up every paragraph they write with my red pen and pointing out all the mistakes!