Studied Dictation

Before I launch into the joys of studied dictation, I thought I'd share two pictures of Pamela during her break. Below, you see her watching television. And to the left are the babies (NOT DOLLS) watching television with her. She put them there!










Charlotte Mason's method for teaching language arts is based upon child development. Rather than forcing paper skills on children at younger and younger ages, desperately hoping to give them a head start, she believed in laying a foundation for writing through oral language. In her first book, Home Education, her recommendations for children under the age of six are vastly different from that of older children because she believed in the outdoor life for the little ones. She required NO formal lessons for preschool and kindergarten. Zero. Zip. NADA!

In those tender years, she focused on oral language. She believed children ought to sharpen their speaking abilities by telling what they see in their explorations outside. An educator broadens vocabulary by supplying unfamiliar names for and parts of objects found by children and improves listening skills by sharing what she sees and asks thoughtful (not gotcha) questions. To hone articulation, she encouraged reciting sing-songs in English and another language. Those of you with children who struggle with fine motor skills or visual discrimination take note! There are no worksheets and no required reading. Those of you with kids who treat carpet squares like trampolines, there are no prolonged periods of sedentary boredom!

Charlotte recognized that some children under the age of six have a keen interest in letters and reading. She did not see anything wrong with teaching letters and their sounds to kids who were ready as long as it seemed like play and stopped when the child tired of it. She outlined reading lessons combining both phonics and sight words for children once they turned six. Six was not a hard and fast rule for some children bloom later (the appendix of School Education includes a narration by a child of age 7 3/4 in the lowest level class in her school). She also worked on the written expression of six-year olds through penmanship and, once they knew all of their letters, copywork from living books that they read. Copywork focuses attention on spelling, grammar, and punctuation and builds the foundation for learning the mechanics of writing. Here is an example of Pamela's copywork right now:



And, now, finally, I reach the topic of today's post: studied dictation. Charlotte Mason scaffolded the teaching of composition by introducing studied dictation only after children had nailed down copywork. Most children started when they turned eight. Early in my blog, I described how to do studied dictation and a sample spelling lesson. I love studied dictation because it is a fast, efficient way to teach writing mechanics! The following three-minute shows you how quickly you can do studied dictation (which we try to do daily).


When Pamela requested doing Eric Carle books this year, I agreed because some contain quite challenging words. We started off with The Very Hungry Caterpillar two weeks ago. I decided to have an English notebook to store Pamela's copywork, poems for recitation, and studied dictation. Here is the sheet Pamela studies, which doubles as a record of how she fared.

You can see in the page on the left the first eight days of writing were perfect! She made several mistakes on the ninth day, which contained many challenging words. I wrote a lesson focused on three errors: changing y to i when adding a suffix, listening to vowels in the middle of a multi-syllabic word, and contrasting long e at the end of English words versus Italian words. I wrap up the lesson with application of what was covered in the form of a caterpillar story as you can see below.



Clearly, my lesson was effective for Pamela did not make those mistakes again in her second attempt at this sentence. The next lesson covered the mistakes made on the tenth day: capitalizing words derived from the names of countries, listening to the ending of words, and placing a space between adjectives and nouns.

As you can see, both lessons worked. Her third attempt was perfect!

Boring Spelling Tests versus Studied Dictation

Does your child sprint around the house and dance with joy after a spelling test? Mine does!

I was chatting with a friend with a second grader enrolled in school. Her son was frustrated and bored in spelling class. Here is a sample of his word list for last week:

who
what
where
when
why
how
their
there
they're
should
could
would
HOW
BORING
IS
THAT

Spelling (unless you are in a spelling bee) usually occurs while you write real words in real sentences! That is why I love studied dictation: Pamela's "spelling words" are part of a real sentence. She has daily spelling tests and looks forward to them because they are so interesting to her. I will use the poem she mastered this week as an example, City by Langston Hughes. Here is what we do, and you can learn more by getting a copy of Cheri Hedden's presentation on Spelling vs. Studied Dictation:

Day One
I type a poem picked by Pamela, double-spaced in Word. I do alter punctuation and spelling to conform with standard practices if necessary. The first day of a new poem, she copies one sentence (if not too long) hand onto paper as copywork. After copying the sentence, she studies the typed version of it. She gets out a clean sheet of paper, and I read the sentence to her. She writes what she hears in the dictation, and I check it. She used to check for errors, but she gets so excited about how she did she has to run around the house until she finds out.

In the morning, the city spreads its wings, making a song in stone that sings.

This time she made one error! Every time she makes an error in a dictation, I highlight the correct version on the typed sheet and write the date underneath (it makes wonderful documentation). When she studies it the next day, she looks at the sheet and she sees what parts of the poem needs the most attention based on the highlighting.

Day Two
The next day, I wrote a lesson about her error, which was writing spreds. It may look like a worksheet, but this one has meaning and context because the lesson is focused upon learning a word she needs to spell.

After she finishes the lesson, she studies the typed, highlighted version. When ready, she gets out a clean sheet of paper, and I slowly read the dictation. This time she wrote it perfectly!!!

Day Three
The next day, she copies the entire poem (two sentences). Without realizing it, the spelling lesson from the day before dovetailed nicely with the second verse (bed and head):

In the morning, the city spreads its wings, making a song in stone that sings. In the evening, the city goes to bed, hanging lights about its head.

She studies the typed, highlighted version. She pulls out a clean sheet of paper, and I give her another dictation. And another perfect score! Tomorrow she will be ready for a new poem.

Spelling Tests vs. Studied Dictation
Pamela rarely makes the same mistake twice, but occasionally that happens (most often it is punctuation, not spelling). Some new lines in a poem may take longer than a day or two. But, sentence by sentence, verse by verse, we get through entire poems, some as complex as A Pirate Story by Robert Louis Stevenson: it took her a whole month to master it perfectly, line by line. But, she did! We started with one sentence and worked our way up to all three verses. Her last dictation she wrote all the verses at one time--perfectly:

Three of us afloat in the meadow by the swing, three of us abroad in the basket on the lea, winds are in the air. They are blowing in the spring, and waves are on the meadow like the waves there are at sea. Where shall we adventure today that we're afloat? Shall it be to Africa, a-steering of the boat, to Providence, or Babylon or off to Malabar? Hi! But, here's a squadron a-rowing on the sea—cattle on the meadow a-charging with a roar! Quick! And, we'll escape them; they're as mad as they can be. The wicket is the harbor, and the garden is the shore.

This means that she takes "spelling test" every day. What! A spelling test every day? Think about it! There is no big build up to Friday. We spend a total of 15 to 30 minutes in this daily habit: copy, dictate, check, document, and write a lesson. Some days we have no formal spelling lesson or grammar lesson, a reward for a perfect dictation.

I have been using this system since the summer. I do not waste our precious time drilling what she already knows (thus boring her). I target what she needs to know in my lessons. Studied dictation is simple, efficient, respectful of the child. How can you feel like you accomplished anything by just writing a bunch of random words with no meaning or context? It might as well be writing jibberish. Compare that to mastering sentences from a cherished book, the Bible, or an entire poem. Studied dictation wins in a contest against mindless spelling tests every time!

Penmanship 2006

To give parents with struggling writers hope, I thought I would post a snapshot of Pamela's studied dictation of Tennyson's Cradle Song from yesterday. She wrote this on regular filler paper with lines spaced 3/8 of an inch apart. Compare the neatness and legibility of her handwriting today to her shaky capital letters of nine years ago.

One point of studied dictation is to show one's best efforts in penmanship, spelling, grammar, etc. This is a sample of her handwriting at its neatest. Pamela only made three minor errors: she left out a comma, capitalized then, and wrote she rest. I corrected her work in purple ink, and today's grammar lesson covered noun-verb agreement. Today's studied dictation had only one error: she misspelled 'til.

Teaching What They Need to Know When They Need to Know It

The beauty of a Charlotte Mason philosophy is teaching what my kids need to know when they need to know it. One does not have to work every single exercise in a grammar book or memorize spelling lists to become skilled in the mechanics of writing. For example, I have never formally taught spelling. When they make a spelling error in their studied dictation or writing, I develop a spelling lesson around that word (using either similar words or those that offer a contrast).

Yesterday’s studied dictation of the first four lines of Daffodowndilly illustrates this process. In her previous dictation, Pamela had confused “were” with “wore” and wrote, “She were her greenest gown.” This was the only mistake she made. I wrote a short lesson tailored to what she needed to know under the dictation:

wore = past tense for wear
were = past tense for are

She wore her yellow sun-bonnet.
Her sun-bonnets were pretty.

Her gowns __________ long.
She __________ her greenest gown.
Her jeans __________ blue.
She __________ her blue jeans.
She __________ red ribbons.
Her ribbons __________ curly.
She __________ new sneakers.
Her sneakers __________ bouncy.
Her earrings __________ dangling.
She __________ long earrings.
Her socks __________ short.
She __________ solid white socks.

Pamela spent about five minutes doing the lesson. Then she studied the first four lines of the poem, aced her dictation, and recited it nearly perfectly. She is ready for the entire poem. She has never memorized language for recitation so quickly, and, clearly, the multi-sensory way of learning is what she needs. She was so proud of her accomplishment: as soon as she put her pencil down, Pamela told me, "Congratulations!" for she knew she had written it perfectly. After her recitation, her face lit up with her bright smile. Because of her flat affect, a smile meant a strong emotion.

The neat thing is how connected learning becomes. In her speech therapy program, we have turned our focus to three aspects of sentence structure last week and this week: does not have any, his/her in the subject of a sentence, and is/are in a sentence with the structure, subject-is/are-adjective. The spelling lesson reinforced the structures she is mastering in the association method. It thrills me every time a moment of connectedness emerges.

Daffodowndilly

Just when I think I have Pamela figured out, she amazes me again! Last Sunday, I mentioned Pamela's mastery of two verses from A.A. Milne's poem, Growing Up On Wednesday, she nailed the entire poem! I am stunned, speechless! This is truly a miracle. She has never memorized a verse of a poem in three months, much less three days!

For years and years, I have avoided recitation because trying to teach an aphasiac poetry was painful. Her tongue tripped over little words, her word order was all over the map, and she sputtered and stuttered. Memorization of anything except catchy phrases from television and radio was completely out of reach. Yes, I settled for "No payments until October 2006" and "I just saved a bunch of money on car insurance by switching to Geico" because it was better than nothing. After disastrous flirtations with recitation, I concluded Charlotte Mason was totally wrong about recitation when she said, "All children have it in them to recite; it is an imprisoned gift waiting to be delivered, like Ariel from the pine" (Volume 1, page 223). Being imprisoned in the pine with Ariel seemed more inviting that teaching Pamela poetry.

It only took ten years, but I have finally found a system for memorizing poetry that works for Pamela. When she recites "Growing Up," her face shines and she giggles. A.A. Milne poetry is now part of her repertoire of stim phrases, repeated for her personal enjoyment. If given the choice between stimming on advertising and poems, the latter wins!

Charlotte Mason recommended teaching poetry through auditory channels, Pamela's weak spot. I have known for years that she is a visual-kinesthetic learner, so other elements of Miss Mason's philosophy work better for memorization of poetry (copywork and studied dictation). Here are the steps:

First, I type up the poem in prose fashion and slightly alter the spelling and grammar to conform to standard Americanized English. Here is how Pamela's new poem, "Daffodowndilly" by Milne, usually appears:

She wore her yellow sun-bonnet,
She wore her greenest gown;
She turned to the south wind
And curtsied up and down.
She turned to the sunlight
And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbour:
"Winter is dead."

This is how the poem appears in Pamela's studied dictation sheet:

She wore her yellow sun-bonnet. She wore her greenest gown. She turned to the south wind and curtsied up and down. She turned to the sunlight and shook her yellow head, and whispered to her neighbor, "Winter is dead."

Second, I break up the poem into manageable pieces. For Pamela, four lines is the right length, and she focuses on four lines at a time.

Third, Pamela writes the first four lines of the poem from the studied dictation for her copywork (penmanship).

Fourth, she studies the typed version. When ready, I recite the poem to her, a few words at a time, and she writes what she hears on a clean sheet of paper. When finished, she compares what she wrote to the typed version to look for any mistakes.

Fifth, whenever she makes a mistake in her dictation, I turn it into a grammar lesson for the next day. Prior to the next studied dictation, we cover a short lesson that will help her avoid the error in future dictations. She repeats step four and cycle from grammar lesson to studying to dictation until she makes absolutely no mistakes.

Sixth, after a perfect dictation, I ask her to recite. Usually her recitation is nearly correct, but halting. Within a few days, she has perfected it!

Seventh, we go back to the third step, turning our focus to the first eight lines of the poem. I keep adding four lines at a time until she has mastered the entire poem as copywork and studied dictation. After all the visual and kinesthetic work, the recitation comes much more naturally!

I know this sounds dull and tedious, but it is not! Yesterday, when Pamela started "Daffodowndilly" she had already placed her next order for "The End" by Milne. For the first time ever, memorizing poetry is sheer joy.

Who's Coming Out with Me?

We follow a Charlotte Mason philosophy of education. Pamela does copywork (for penmanship) and studied dictation (for grammar, spelling, capitalization, or punctuation). She has never been able to master recitation of poetry because she found it difficult to remember what little word went where. Over the summer, I had some revelations, and my new approach seems to be working! Yesterday, on the drive to see the movie One Night with the King, Pamela recited the first two verses of "Growing Up" by A.A. Milne, to her father, just for fun:

I’ve got shoes with grown up laces.
I’ve got knickers and a pair of braces.
I’m all ready to run some races.
Who’s coming out with me?

I’ve got a nice new pair of braces.
I’ve got shoes with new brown laces.
I know wonderful paddly places.
Who’s coming out with me?

Every morning my new grace is,
“Thank you, God, for my nice braces.
I can tie my new brown laces.”
Who’s coming out with me?

The answer came to me at a Charlotte Mason conference in Boiling Springs, North Carolina last June when three presentations and one of Pamela's abilities inspired the final solution. One presentation covered studied dictation and described a very simple, efficient way to do and document dictation, while another on recitation encouraged me to keep trying. The presentation about good instruction left me with a profound thought: information must have context and meaning and must be connected to previous knowledge for the mind to remember. Finally, I realized that Pamela had been reciting for years in the form of echolalia (television commercials and videos) and Mother Goose rhymes. She can memorize word patterns with enough exposure.

Since Pamela adores nursery rhymes, they must have meaning for her. Over the summer, she did studied dictation one rhyme at a time, which focused her mind on the context behind the little words she easily forgets. Because she has previous knowledge of these rhymes, dictation allowed her to focus upon little words. For every mistake made in a dictation, I wrote a short language arts lesson, providing both meaning and context behind the rules. Because it took a week or two of repeated dictations to get a perfect dictation, the process repeatedly exposed Pamela to a poem in a multi-sensory way (by seeing the poem while studying for a dictation, hearing me dictate it, and writing it for the dictation).

The big break through came after our first page of nursery rhymes. Pamela must have been bored for she handed me When We Were Very Young and she said, "I want 'Growing Up'"! She stunned me because that poem has twelve lines! Several sentences are very similar, and I would never have picked something I assumed to be so difficult. Going back to good instruction, this poem has meaning for Pamela. Having enjoyed the poem enough to ask for it, she clearly has previous knowledge of it. The proof is in the pudding for she has already mastered eight of twelve lines.

In the process of learning two verses, we have covered many topics in language arts: subjects and verbs, complete sentences, using uppercase versus lowercase letters in sentences, contractions for is, adding the suffix ful, adding y to words with e at the end, and using articles with singular versus plural nouns. Studied dictation is such an elegant way to teach children what they need to know when they need to know!