Dictation Passages For Grade 5 Pdf
Graziana Getz
Today we want to talk about how to do formal spelling lessons in a Charlotte Mason way: dictation. If you have been following the previous articles in this How To series, you will have seen how Charlotte included some spelling components in both copywork and transcription. (And even in beginning reading lessons.) Those preparatory practices have laid the foundation for more formal spelling lessons in a couple of ways.
Some students will benefit from transcribing the passage during this studying step, but not all of them will. For some students, transcribing the passage will help solidify it in their minds; for others, transcription will just be busywork. So teach the child. Use this step of the lesson to help each child discover and customize the study techniques that will fit him best.
Now look for any words you are not one hundred percent sure you know how to spell correctly. Focus on those words and study them, however you learn best, until you have learned their spellings. Go ahead and pause here if you need to. When you are sure you know how to spell all of those words, come back and begin reading again.
The first way to level a dictation passage up or down is by adjusting its length. The longer the passage, the more potential words to be learned and written. Your sweet spot will be no more than three or four unknown words in a passage. So if the passage has ten or fifteen word spellings that have to be learned, shorten it to where it has only three or four new words maximum.
The second way to level up or down is to adjust the length of the passage to be written. It is perfectly acceptable to assign a longer passage for studying, but then dictate only a portion of that passage for writing. In fact, as your student gets older and builds up that mental storehouse, you will be assigning longer passages to study but you will be dictating only a portion of each passage.
Though he is a good speller, he is not as good at remembering to indent and to use proper sentence punctuation. Our previous spelling program never focused on that! I can see now why studied dictation helps kids become better writers. We are moving along rather nicely now, but he still forgets to indent now and then and he still ends up needing to do passages with question marks several times. On very rare occasions, he spells a word wrong. Overall, he misses one passage a week and needs to redo that. I can see he is learning so much and becoming a more careful writer.
With my next son, who was a great speller and great at writing at a young age, we meandered through studied dictation to finish in high school. He rarely missed a passage. With my third son, who was not a natural speller in any way, we have taken awhile to pass the passages. He is four passages away from finishing the last level of studied dictation right now as a junior in high school. His spelling has definitely improved so much, although it has taken years. We do see carryover into his writing too now. Hooray!
With my fourth son, who also is not a natural speller, we are slowly moving through the passages. He is definitely wishing and lamenting he was further in dictation right now as he is on the verge of MTMM. However, this desire to move quicker is a good impetus for him to pay more attention and make those needed switches in his mental picturing of words he chronically spells wrong.
Now on to your main question. As far as spelling goes, in high school there is no grade for spelling. Often it is just an expectation that students spell correctly in their compositions. Points are detracted for incorrect spelling, but no credit or grade of any kind is given for spelling. This will be the same for college-level work.
I look at studied dictation through HOD as a journey to complete at the pace that suits the child. The goal is to complete Level 8 by the end of high school. This journey will differ for every child. That is the beauty of studied dictation. Just be sure your child is studying the passage prior to dictation. The studying part and focused attention is a key to Charlotte Mason-style success in spelling. During the studying phase of the passage, it can help to write in black marker on a white board any words you or the child feel they may miss. This extra layer of visualizing really helps prior to the dictating phase. Having the child trace over hard words in the passage with his/her pencil to make them bolder during the studying phase helps too.
Copywork and dictation can be done more frequently than weekly. The Arrow/Boomerang are designed to support the homeschooling parent, not to replace her own good judgment and her skills as a home educator. In fact, when I first designed the Arrow (which came first), I used to always say that the goal was to model how copywork and dictation can be done (how to select passages, how to teach them, how to make them more meaningful). I fully expected that mothers would then learn how to do it themselves and not need the Arrow any more.
3) Kids like to pick their own copywork. When the parent selects only one passage per week, kids have the freedom of choosing other passages to copy (song lyrics, poetry, quotes from a beloved book, sayings on refrigerator magnets). That way, you focus on ONE passage, really teach it, and then your kids can select the ones they want.
4) For reluctant writers, it is a lot to ask them to do handwriting work (in a book, for instance), copywork, dictation, freewriting, and any writing project all in a week. The Arrow and Boomerang allow you to feel that you are covering the material necessary to a good language arts program without putting your child through too much pencil trauma.
Hmm. I never assumed that the one passage meant once a week. In fact we often used that passage several times in a week. Particularly when just starting out, dictation feels like a big thing to do with a completely new passage. So we would do the passage as copywork first, possibly in two chunks if it was long, and then do the same passage as dictation on Friday. That way you can actually teach the passage, stopping to talk about anything that might be complicated as it occurs.
JoVE, what a great idea! My son is almost 10, and has only been doing copywork off and on for about a year. I feel he is not ready to move right into dictation. My plan was to do copywork for the next 6-12 months, move to French dictation, and do French dictation for about 6-12 months, and then dictation. I think I might have him use copywork Mon and Tues, French dictation Wednesday and Thursday, and dictation on Friday for the passage used in Arrow. He has been also doing free copywork two or three days per week, where he gets to choose what he would like to copy.
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My 3rd grader has difficulty remembering the dictation passages. I will read multiple (3 or more) times the passage and just getting started frustrates her. Especially when the sentences have information that is not familiar to her. Suggestions please!
I would break it down in some way with the aim of getting her to the place where she can listen to the whole thing and remember it. Could you talk about the unfamiliar things in the passage before you do the dictation so that she is somewhat familiar with them? Is it spelling the words that interferes with her doing it? You could do it a sentence at a time, or section at a time and then build up gradually. If it is too much for her right now then forcing her to keep trying the hard way will probably really meet with resistance, so I would definitely find some way to break it down so it's manageable and then work your way up. One thing that just occurred to me was maybe letting her look at the passage for a few minutes and then do it as dictation. You could shorten the time she has to study it as a way of progressing.
I give him spellings for words he doesn't know or might get wrong. I break longer dictations into sentences or even clauses, if needed. Sometimes we do them as studied dictation. This works well. Sometimes I just do them as copywork and move on. Dictation is useful, but don't let it ruin the whole program for you! Ds enjoys the literature excerpts and does fine with narrations.
My 9 year old can't do the dictations after 3 repetitions either. Truly, I doubt there are very many third graders who could. We adapt: either more that 3 repetitions (sometimes many more) to memorize the entire passage, or break the passage down into shorter chunks to dictate in series. I'm seeing steady progress as the year goes by, so I am happy with this.
I've looked through WWE4 (looking ahead to next year). I don't think that I am capable of doing some of those dictations in 3 repetitions myself! So I will likely continue adapting for my kids and call it good.
My oldest was in PS through third grade and had never encountered dictation before. She absolutely struggled with the memorywork, though she was great at the writing assignments. It frustrated her to no end. So I broke down the passages, sometimes a lot. I like the idea of letting the student read through the passages a few times first so that they can become familiar with new words.
With my DS, we first go over any words that he may not know how to spell. I read the passage all the way through twice, then he tries to repeat it back to me (there's usually at least an error or two). I repeat it again. Then if he gets stuck as he writes, I will repeat a sentence or clause if necessary. When we first started, we had to do one sentence or clause at a time. He's vastly improved how much he can retain and write down without prompting. We started WWE 3 over half way into third grade last year, took the summer off, and picked it back up for fourth grade. He's on lesson 20 now and improving with each lesson.
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