Dictations are a very helpful tool in the teaching of spelling. They are a very important part of Reading Made Simple. Many children can learn a spelling list to pass the spelling test on Friday, but there is more to learning spelling than passing the test. More importantly, the child needs to learn to use the new spelling knowledge in his/her independent writing. In other words, a child's word-building skills must become integrated into his/her general reading and writing. Yes, reading too, as reading and writing are linked. A good speller is often a good reader, but it is not necessarily the case that a good reader is a good speller, if the initial teaching has been poor. Reading does help writing, as it helps to enrich vocabulary and sentence construction. But spelling helps reading as it forces a child to look at the letter combinations and patterns in the words read, which means that the child can decipher far more words than his/her memory can hold. Seeing as most children, especially younger ones, do not write enough to use all the words in their spelling list often enough for them to become familiar to the child, dictations are invaluable, if they are carefully structured, to revise the words that have been taught. The dictations that form part of each Reading Made Simple spelling lesson are carefully designed. They only use the words that have been taught each week, for each sound family. In addition, they are done the week after the sound family has been taught. By the time a child does a dictation, s/he will have learnt another sound family. This gives a suitable distance away so that the child is forced to rely on his/her phonic knowledge, rather than memory. It also gives the child confidence - there are no nasty surprises of words for which the child has not been taught the knowledge to spell. Confidence means greater success. Of course, memory does play a large part. To start with the child must have learnt the letter shapes for which each of the 26 initial sounds stand. As we learn more complex spelling patterns, there are many incongruences caused by the English language that must be learnt. For example, we have more than one way of making many sounds: ee/ea, or/aw, a-i/a-e/ay/eigh for example. Further more we have things like silent letters. For example, the word knee begins with a silent 'k'. So the memory is not redundant at all. It is best if these things are leant in a structured, meaningful way. Dictations provide that way in the Reading Made Simple programme for spelling. In fact - although the programme aims to teach reading and spelling together to young/special needs children, there are many who use it purely as a spelling programme for children who can already read - both for KS1 and upwards. How to give a dictation1. First, make sure the pupil is familiar with all the words in the passage, including any 'odd' (irregular) words. 2. Read the passage, to the pupil, right the way through to begin with. Pause clearly at the end of each sentence. Ask the child to narrate back to you what s/he has heard. Then tell the child you will read it again, a word/short phrase at a time, giving time for him/her to write before you give the next part. Repeat each part twice if necessary, but we want to encourage the child to hold the information in his/her memory. Be led by the needs of your pupil. 3.Do not help with spellings or punctuation. Turn away if you think you will be tempted to point out a mistake! 4. Once the dictation is over, ask the student to read his/her work through, out loud, pointing to each word (with finger or pencil tip) to check for errors. Check for two things:
Help as necessary until the passage is correctly spelt and punctuated. 6. It is good if the pupil can draw a picture to go with the dictation, as this helps to establish the words on each list in the child's mind. Problems you may encounter when doing a dictation
Be patientIf you use the Reading Made Simple dictations and ensure that the child learns first to sounds out the words in each sound family rather than trying to memorise the spellings, before doing each dictation, then a child's spelling ought to progress smoothly. Too many errors means that the teaching has not been suitable to the child's needs: note - not the method. The method has been proven to work with many children, but the way that the teacher matches the programme to the child is all important. However, even if all is going well, it can still take some children a long time to understand how to use full stops. Keep going, is my advice, and keep taking every opportunity to explain what is needed. I hope that you have learnt how helpful dictations can be in the development of good spelling skills.
If you have nay questions, please contact me and I will do my best to help. Comments are closed.
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WelcomeHello, I'm Lilibette, qualified teacher (B.Ed Hons). I have taught phonics in mainstream education, followed by have home-educated my two sons to 18, and am now a private tutor. Categories
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