Dictation

What is it?

Dictation is the process of writing down what someone else has said. With young children, dictation provides a way for a parent or teacher to record a child's thoughts or ideas when the demands of writing exceed their writing skills. Dictation offers an opportunity for an adult to model many writing behaviors, including handwriting, the correspondence between sounds and letters to spell words, and sentence formation.

Source

Why use it?

It allows students to observe how an adult writes using many writing conventions, such as letter formation, punctuation, spacing between words, and more.

Teachers can model how to listen to the sounds in words and write the corresponding letters.

It provides an opportunity to show that speech can be written and read again.

The dictation can be used in different content areas.

Key Information

How?

Individual

Small groups

Focus

Phonetics

Spelling

Writing

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How to implement it?

Basic steps

Ask your student to draw a picture of something of their choice, such as their family, a house, their pet, or another concept that the child is familiar with.
Then, ask him to say one or two sentences about the drawing, for example, "Our dog is brown." Write the child's words at the bottom of their drawing and read them aloud.
As you write, model a clear correspondence between sound and letter. "We read a book about the moon. I am going to write the word mmmmmoon. What sound is at the beginning of moon? What letter makes that sound?" Encourage your student to read the sentence as well.

Try a group story

Group stories can arise from a shared experience in class, such as a field trip or a school assembly. Here I explain how to do an interactive or cooperative writing activity:
Start with a brainstorming session for a title. Write down the children's ideas. If necessary, guide the sequence: "What happened first? And then what did we do?" and so on.
Record the sentences as the children dictate them. M
As you write, model a clear correspondence between sound and letter. "We read a book about the moon. I am going to write the word mmmmmoon. What sound is at the beginning of moon? What letter makes that sound?" When the story is finished, read it aloud with your students.
Read it several times and then ask if anyone wants to read it alone.
Give everyone the opportunity to read. Later, copy the story onto a large piece of paper and display it in the classroom.

How to implement it?

For second language learners, students with varied reading skills, and younger students.

Vary your expectations regarding the length of the dictation according to the language and/or the child's age.
Strategies like this allow children from other cultures to bring their different experiences into the classroom to share. Sharing dictations, by any means, will enrich the experience of other students.
Group dictations in the form of a class story can help familiarize students with the strategy.

This article is a free adaptation and translation of: Reading Rockets (n.d.) Dictation.https://www.readingrockets.org/classroom/classroom-strategies/dictation

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Dictation

What is it?

Why use it?

It allows students to observe how an adult writes using many writing conventions, such as letter formation, punctuation, spacing between words, and more.

Teachers can model how to listen to the sounds in words and write the corresponding letters.

It provides an opportunity to show that speech can be written and read again.

The dictation can be used in different content areas.

Key Information

How?

Focus

How to implement it?

Basic steps

Ask your student to draw a picture of something of their choice, such as their family, a house, their pet, or another concept that the child is familiar with.

Then, ask him to say one or two sentences about the drawing, for example, "Our dog is brown." Write the child's words at the bottom of their drawing and read them aloud.

As you write, model a clear correspondence between sound and letter. "We read a book about the moon. I am going to write the word mmmmmoon. What sound is at the beginning of moon? What letter makes that sound?" Encourage your student to read the sentence as well.

Try a group story

Group stories can arise from a shared experience in class, such as a field trip or a school assembly. Here I explain how to do an interactive or cooperative writing activity:

Start with a brainstorming session for a title. Write down the children's ideas. If necessary, guide the sequence: "What happened first? And then what did we do?" and so on.

Record the sentences as the children dictate them. M

As you write, model a clear correspondence between sound and letter. "We read a book about the moon. I am going to write the word mmmmmoon. What sound is at the beginning of moon? What letter makes that sound?" When the story is finished, read it aloud with your students.

Read it several times and then ask if anyone wants to read it alone.

Give everyone the opportunity to read. Later, copy the story onto a large piece of paper and display it in the classroom.

How to implement it?

For second language learners, students with varied reading skills, and younger students.

Vary your expectations regarding the length of the dictation according to the language and/or the child's age.

Strategies like this allow children from other cultures to bring their different experiences into the classroom to share. Sharing dictations, by any means, will enrich the experience of other students.

Group dictations in the form of a class story can help familiarize students with the strategy.

This article is a free adaptation and translation of: Reading Rockets (n.d.) Dictation.https://www.readingrockets.org/classroom/classroom-strategies/dictation

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