Dictation is a great tool for testing students’ retention of the spelling words they have been learning because if they can spell the words correctly in a situation of cognitive overload (remembering multiple words, forming and spacing letters and words correctly, adding in punctuation) then it is a better indicator that they have actually learned those words.
Dictation also provides an excellent opportunity to check to see if students are able to identify sentences and to correctly punctuate those sentences. It can also be an excellent teaching opportunity.
Steps for Giving Dictation
- Create a passage containing the words the student is currently learning to spell and words from previous spelling lists. From an intervention perspective, students should not be expected to learn more than 10 words each week.
- Depending on your creativity and the words in the list, you should be able to use all the words in 2 to 4 sentences.
- Make sure you include a sentence that is asking a question and speech as this provides an opportunity for students to use the punctuation conventions associated with these types of sentences and for you to check for errors in usage.
- Read the entire passage and ask students to put up one finger for each sentence in the passage.
- If students have difficulty doing this, you might need to exaggerate the end of each sentence by taking an obvious breath and pausing a little longer.
- Once students have accurately determined the correct number of sentences, reread the passage and ask them to identify which sentence was asking a question and which one contained speech.
- Dictate the sentence phrase by phrase. Each time you say a phrase ask students to repeat the phrase before writing. This is to assist in remembering all the words in the phrase. As they become more competent, ask them to silently repeat the phrase.
- Don’t correct students as they write, even if you see someone making an error.
- Check to make sure all students have finished writing before dictating the next phrase.
- Remind students to place a line under any word they are not sure has been spelled correctly and encourage them to move onto the next word.
Steps for Marking Dictation
- Once the entire passage has been dictated, ask students how many sentences were in the passage and remind them that every sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop. Also remind them that one sentence contains a question and needs a question mark at the end and one sentence contains speech and needs the appropriate punctuation. Give the students time to make sure they have the correct punctuation.
- Reread the passage slowly giving students time to identify any spelling errors, missing words, added words or substituted words. At the end, provide a few more minutes for students to attempt to correct their errors.
- Walk around the room and quickly determine any words that many students have written incorrectly. Write some of the misspellings on the whiteboard and as a class, decode the word exactly as it has been written. Then work together to determine the correct spelling of the word and ask all students to check their spelling of the word and make any corrections, (if necessary), using a different coloured pen to the one they initially used (their marking pen). See the post on Correcting Spelling Mistakes for how to do this effectively.
- Show students the dictation passage (either written on a whiteboard or displayed on a smartboard). This passage should not show any punctuation.
- Ask a student to come to the front.
- This student must then ask any other student(s) in the class to help punctuate the first sentence. In other words, this student is NOT making the decision on how to correctly punctuate the sentence and therefore it is a great role to give your weaker students.
- The student at the front makes the necessary changes.
- Once the student has finished, check with the whole class to see if everyone agrees.
- Make anymore changes to ensure the sentence has been punctuated correctly.
- Everyone then takes their marking pen and makes any corrections required.
- Repeat this process with the remaining sentences.
- You can then collect students’ papers and will be able to determine each student’s errors as these will be obvious from the corrections made using the different coloured marking pen.
This strategy is significantly more powerful in terms of learning than simply collecting students’ papers, marking them and handing them back for students to glance at the mark!