I had read and read about the usefulness of dictation. I decided to give it a go this year, although my youngest-5th grade-is a bit on the old side for it. It has been wonderful. DD actually looks FORWARD to doing it. (weird) Somehow she likes the challenge of hearing it and trying to get the mechanics correct. I don't give a grade for it; I just give the passage to her when she is done and let her see if she needs to make any corrections. My 6th grader was so interested that she now wants me to do it with her too. This has just been a huge surprise to me. I thought dictation would end in tears and a very unpleasant meltdown. But alas not. Does anyone else use it?
We do copywork with my younger two, but I usually don't do dictation. I have in the past, especially with my middle one involving her spelling words. Total Language Plus also has a dictation section.
Yeah Jackie, TLP (I've used 6 or so of their books) is where I first saw it-but didn't utilize it. Then I read about it in WTM and decided "what the heck?"
I haven't tried dictation BUT I liked the copywork idea. I cheated and found a book that is similar to dailygrams in that it has short passages for the student to copy and that way I don't have to provide anything. It is totally in cursive and Joyce loves it!
Deanna, Glad it's going so well for you! And I'm sure it will really help them in the long-run! Good job! No, I'm not doing it. I've meant to do more of the dictation and copywork, but this year it's been pretty slim. When we were doing SOTW, we actually did quite a bit of both, though, since it just leant itself to that.
