Short Dictation Sentences

[Silvana Fleischacker]

Just had a question for you all. My son is in 1st grade in public school. He was adopted last year from China. Instead of spelling tests each Friday. His teacher gives them dictation sentences. She gives them 5 sentences but only requires him to do two. He has yet to get them correct this year. I have him copy them for 4 days at home to prepare him. It just seems like a pretty difficult task for the first semester of first grade for most kids much less an ESL kid. Here are the sentences for this week:

I think that's a bit much. Basically he is being asked to memorize how to spell a series of words. My oldest takes dictation sentences from AAS, but only with words that she has mastered through her spelling curriculum. SWB even says that first graders should be expected to properly copy sentences I first grade, not dictation.

I use K12 for phonics. We do dictation of one or two sentences, and only words that he's learned. They combine phonics/reading with spelling. So when they learn the blend "sc" then they learn words like scat. Last week it was the digraph blend "shr" so he learned "shrimp". THe sentence for that day was "The shrimp is hot."

Private school second grade teacher here, and, yes, that sounds like a bit too much. The first grade teacher at my school goes with the standard list of related words and gives them one short dictation sentence to practice, which is made up of a spelling word or two and a high frequency word.

Thank-you all for replying. This is a veteran teacher so I am a bit surprised that she thinks this is developmentally appropriate. This little guy is my #10 and so I've been down this road a time or two. I ramp up the academics slowly for my kids but expect a lot from my middle and high schoolers. I was beginning to think maybe I was wrong in thinking it was too much for even a regular 1st grader.

That is a developmentally inappropriate way of teaching spelling. I wouldn't even rely on dictation alone to teach spelling. They need a foundation in phonics. Copywork is okay for 1st graders, not dictation imo. And spelling needs to be sequential and phonetically based.

I am a promoter for dictation at a young age. My background: Coming from Germany, I grew up with a very low tolerance towards spelling mistakes. By the end of first grade we were required to write a one page story (50 words) through dictation. One mistake would automatically get you one grade lower, including punctuation!

I have a first grader and this is certainly beyond what she does each day. She usually does 1-2 sentences (usually copywork, not dictation) a day. When I do dictate sentences to her, it is 1-2 words that we are currently learning the spelling rules for, along with very "easy" words for her to spell. That teacher is expecting an awful lot!

Is the trouble that he's spelling the words wrong, or that he can't remember the words in the sentence? If he can't hold the words in his head, maybe you could practice at home by slowly building them up. I would work on practicing the spelling of the words individually also. It does seem a bit much for first grade, but if the words are age-appropriate, it's probably doable.

Phonics skills create a solid foundation for students to become successful readers and writers. Honestly, they can handle many challenges when they understand how vowels, consonants, syllables, and blends work! For instance, they can sound out unknown words. This leads to better comprehension and understanding of the text. Likewise, phonics skills allow students to understand how the change in the order of letters changes the entire meaning. Honestly, practicing phonics skills is so essential for students. Thankfully, there are Daily Dictation Sentences to help students work on skills while providing incredible feedback for teachers.

Truly, there are so many phonics skills to learn. Each of them is vital for students to master as they progress on their journey to become readers and writers. Thus, dictation sentences allow students to apply their knowledge in their writing. They can show the teacher they have a true understanding of each specific skill. Likewise, students can receive additional help if they struggle with writing down the words or sentences. Ultimately, dictation sentences allow students to work on all of their phonics skills as they progress towards mastery.

This resource includes 190 dictation sentences focusing on different phonics skills. Each sentence follows a logical Science of Reading Scope and Sequence that builds upon previously taught skills. Students will love that they have a consistent way to work on phonics skills that progress as they do.

Every day, teachers will read focus words and a dictation sentence for students to write in their notebooks. Since students will complete this activity daily, they will know exactly what to do. Importantly, this means they will focus on the content versus figuring out how to complete the assignment.

After students write in their notebooks, teachers can immediately see whether or not each student understands the phonics skill. Ultimately, this means that teachers know who has mastered skills and who needs help. Likewise, it shows which skills need further instruction.

When working on dictation sentences, students are not only working on phonics skills. Additionally, they practice handwriting, punctuation, and capitalization. This quick activity allows students to practice so many essential skills at once.

Dictation sentences are versatile in how teachers can implement them. For instance, students can work on this activity as a whole class. Furthermore, they can complete them with a small group. This group can then focus on re-teaching or progressing to the next skill. Similarly, dictation sentences work great for one-on-one instruction. No matter how teachers implement them, students will show their phonics understanding.

Teachers work hard to ensure students learn as much as they can each year. They want every student to feel confident with the curriculum. Thankfully, the Daily Dictation Sentences provide an excellent way for students to showcase their phonics skills in a consistent format!

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Blevins recommends doing sentence dictation at least twice per week, beginning as early as Kindergarten. I try to do it every day or every other day, depending on the group of kids and how much time we have together.

One of the great things about sentence dictation is the minimal prep involved. You really just need pencils and paper or whiteboards and dry-erase markers. Other than that, you just need the sentences! Most explicit phonics programs give you at least a handful of sentences to use for dictation, targeting each skill in their particular scope and sequence.

Currently, I have developed sentence dictation resources for 18 different phonics skills, including short vowels, digraphs, trigraph TCH, suffix -S, initial blends, final blends, and VCE words. The details of these resources are provided below.

Another way to go about it is to display a digital image onto a screen in your classroom. You can plan to have your students write the sentence on dry erase boards. This is a great paper-saving option.

At this point, you are confident that your students know the sentence they need to write. They have proven this by repeating the sentence and verifying each word in the sentence. Now you have to direct them to write it!

Tell students that, as you read the sentence for the first check, they need to point to each word on their paper (or board) and check to see if anything is missing. Once they think they have all four words, they can add a check mark after their sentence.

Tell students that, as you read the sentence again for the second check, they will make sure they have proper capitalization and any punctuation they should know. Then they can add a second check mark.

Tell students to read the sentence back to you. Then ask them to help you write the sentence. If you are using your board, you can draw four lines just like your students did. Then call on students to spell each word.

This lesson example is great for those students just learning to write their CVC words and apply them to basic sentences. But what about your students who can easily write much longer sentences without giving it a second thought?

One variation allows students to make up their own caption sentence to match the picture. The other variation is for those students capable of writing multiple sentences. Let them write a descriptive paragraph, or encourage their creativity as they make up their own story!

More problematic, it seems to me, is that, there is no agreed procedure for doing a dictation, which means that, depending on the length of the spoken segments, very different psycholinguistic processes are implicated.

All of which brings me back to the discussion I had with my writer. What are dictations good for? If they are not reliable or valid tests, are they nevertheless worthwhile practice activities? Or is it the case that, as some writers have suggested, doing dictations is good practice only for doing dictations? Or, worse, that it is a form of crowd control?

Uncertainty as to what dictations are good for is indicated by the fact that writers of methodology texts never quite know where to include them (if at all). Wilga Rivers (1981), for example, puts them in her section on the writing skill. For Harmer (1991) dictation is simply a form of Practice. Ur (1996) puts them under Testing.

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