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Classroom Strategies
Dictation
Dictation is the process of writing down what someone else has said. With young children, dictation offers a way for a parent or a teacher to record a child's thoughts or ideas when the writing demands surpass writing skills. Dictation provides a chance for an adult to model many writing behaviors including handwriting, matching sounds-to-letters to spell words, and sentence formation.
Why use dictation?
- It allows students to watch as an adult writes using many conventions of writing, such as letter formation, punctuation, spacing between words, and more.
- Teachers can model listening to a sound and writing the associated letter.
- It allows us to model that speech can be written down and read back.
| When to use: | Before reading | During reading | After reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| How to use: | Individually | With small groups | Whole class setting |
Examples
Language Arts
Ask students to draw a picture of something of their choice; their family, a house, their pet, or another concept that the child is familiar with. Then ask the child to say a sentence or two about the picture, for example "Our dog is brown." Write the child's words on the bottom of her picture and read them back to her. As you write, model a clear sound to letter match. "We read a book about the moon. I'm going to write the word mmmmmmoon. What sound is at the beginning of moon? What letter makes that sound?" Encourage the child to read the sentence too.
Have students tell a group story. Sometimes called Language Experience Charts, group stories benefit from a shared class experience like a field trip or school assembly. Start by brainstorming a title. Write down the children's ideas. If necessary, prompt a sequence "What happened first? Then what did we do?" and so on. Record the sentences as the children dictate them. As you write, model a clear sound to letter match. "We read a book about the moon. I'm going to write the word mmmmmmoon. What sound is at the beginning of moon? What letter makes that sound?" When the story is finished, read the story aloud with the children. Read it several times, then ask if anyone would like to read it by himself. Give everyone a chance to read. Later, copy the story on chart paper and display it in the classroom.
Children's books to use with this strategy
A Chair for My Mother
Rosa and her family work together to save enough for a new comfortable chair after a fire destroys their home. This warm family story may inspire other family stories. Also available in Spanish.
Kitten's First Full Moon
This straightforward story about the kitten who mistakes the moon's reflection for a bowl of milk may inspire children to tell their own experiences of things misunderstood and what happened.
The Relatives Came
A motley family gathers for an extended and exuberant visit. Children may consider what they might do if they were visiting relatives or friends — or if friends or relatives came to visit their home.
Science
Children learn to describe and care for plants and animals, recording their findings in science journals through pictures, dictation, or kindergarten-style writing.
Children's books to use with this strategy
Diary of a Worm
Through the diary of baseball-cap-wearing worm, a day in one annelid's life may be used to creatively spark a comparison between actual habits and imagined ones.
Leaf Man
Observing changing leaves and tree life cycles are appropriate in fall. Also try Snowballs, Waiting for Wings, Growing Vegetable Soup, and Planting A Rainbow by Lois Ehlert for other seasonal science-related activities.
Social Studies
Teachers can follow up with a read aloud by asking students to summarize a read aloud on a social studies topic. Teachers can write the student dictations on chart paper. Summaries can be read by the whole class.
Children's books to use with this strategy
Duck for President
Duck decides to run for and is elected US President, an office he holds until he decides to return to a quiet farm life. Elections and public offices are introduced in this humorous book. (Duck was the "negotiator" in Click Clack Moo also by Cronin.)
Mama, Do You Love Me?
A child questions the strength of her mother's love asking what behavior might end it. The Alaskan setting highlights specifics of another culture (worth exploring) while focusing on a universal theme.
The Other Side
Two girls, separated by a fence, overcome and ultimately develop a friendship. In this gentle story set in an earlier time, the fence becomes a metaphor for the period's history.
Differentiated instruction
For Second Language Learners, students of varying reading skill, and for younger learners
- Teachers should vary their expectations for the length of dictation based on a child's language and/or age.
- Strategies such as this enable children from other cultures to bring their different experiences into the classroom to share. Sharing dictations through whatever means will enrich the other students' experience.
- Dictations with the whole group in the form of a class story may serve to familiarize students with the strategy.
See the research that supports this strategy
Some of the research done that involves dictation comes from a whole language perspective. We've listed some of that research here. Our instructions for using dictation encourage a more explicit approach to using the strategy than what was included in some of the research listed below.
MacArthur, C. A., & Graham, S. (1987). Learning disabled students' composing under three methods of text production. The Journal of Special Education, 21(3), 22-42.
Stahl, S. A., Miller, P. D. (1989). Whole Language and Language Experience Approaches for Beginning Reading: A Quantitative Research Synthesis. Review of Educational Research, 59, 87-116.
Stauffer, Russell G. (1970). The language experience approach to the teaching of reading. New York: Harper & Row.
