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WWE 4 dictations. Please tell me I'm not the only one.


Novafan
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Please tell me I'm not the only parent who thinks that these dictation exercise are challenging . . . for ME!

 

We are back to homeschooling our 10 year old (5th grade???) after he spent a year in a foreign school. For writing, I assumed that level 4 would be an appropriate level for him. Not happening. The Week 1, Day 1 narration exercise was fairly challenging, but doable. Then we came to Day 2, dictation. WHOA! *I* couldn't remember the sentence let alone my 10 year old. After a near meltdown, I calmed my son down and told him that it's okay if we back the bus up and start with WWE Level 3. I downloaded Level 3 (LOVE e-books) and we worked through Week 1, Days 1 and 2. The exercises were still challenging, but not so much as to bring my son to his knees and make him feel insecure.

 

But am I the only adult here that finds those WWE 4 dictations difficult. While my son was working on his math earlier I sat and tried to perfectly memorize the very long sentence in Dictation exercise Week 1, Day 2 and I could NOT get it perfectly right.

 

I feel like a dunce now!

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No, you are not the only one. I couldn't do some of those WWE 4 dictations myself when I tried. I have only used WWE 1 and 2 with my daughter and we are on week 4 or 5 of WWE 3. So far, she has done fine, but I am not going to be overly concerned about the instant memorization part of the program. I really like WWE, but I think asking her to do that for some of the really long, convoluted passages is overkill, so I am going to dictate a part at a time to her and call it good.

 

There are different philosophies about dictation and many of them do not call for instantly memorizing a passage.

 

Lisa

Edited by LisaTheresa
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I believe the instructions say to read the sentence several times, or perhaps that was in the book I read. LOL I read in "parts" too. However, I use passages and sentences from our classical reading selections. I do not use the WWE books, but have read the how-to book instead. I could not stand for another workbook in the house, LOL. I am too cheap my husband says. I use what we have already to accomplish these goals.

 

So, read in parts. I believe most of us do. Read the sentence several times as well. :) The idea is to have the ears work with the pencil.

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We're doing WWE2 and I find my daughter is better at remembering the sentences than I am! She seems to have a natural skill for remembering things, and I seem to have an ill-exercised memory muscle. I am very, very glad we're using dictation, though... I see such value in learning this skill at a young age, and I think progressing through the books this way will be helpful to both of us!

 

I can't imagine what this will be like for my son (currently in K) when we get to it -- he forgets the first word out of my mouth by the time I get to the second! Ease of memorization does not appear to be one of his natural skills. lol!

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For example, Charlotte Mason advocated studied dictation, not memorizing the passage. There are different educators with different ideas of how dictation should be done.

 

Use the materials in a way that lines up with how YOU want to teach and how YOU want your dc to learn.

 

If the method in WWE is regularly causing frustration, try allowing the student to study the passage, copy it down, learn it...then dictate on another day. The student will learn the correct spelling, punctuation, etc. and will possibly enjoy the exercise more having some control over it.

 

hth,

Robin

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I started a thread about this last week but didn't get any replies. :tongue_smilie:

 

We're in the same boat. They dictation passages are HARD! We've finished WWE 2 and 3 already so there's nowhere for us to "back up" to. I guess we need to continue forging ahead somehow. :willy_nilly:

 

I thought she may have been having a bad day/week so I did go back and give her some of the WWE3 passages. Dd could do those so it must be that WWE4 is that much harder. It may be a very long year for us. :tongue_smilie:

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Yes, WWE4 is a butt kicker for sure. Of course we are just starting into WWE at the 4 level, but ds10 is in 5th so I thought it would be fine. Tears. Tears and time. Ugh. We are just finishing week 2, and the dictation part is getting a little better(yet I'm still amazed at the length of the passages). I am so glad I watched the SWB YouTube of dictation, otherwise I would feel like a failure for having to do it in chunks rather than complete memorization after hearing the passage three times. Sheesh. The narration is the hardest for my ds. He just can't seem to get it the way she teaches it. My hopes are that this will iron out as well, maybe in the next month. Doing both the dictation and narration excercises have really brought to light how little of these skills have been taught at priv. school. I really like WWE, I just didn't know it would take so much of my time teaching. I haven't started dd/ds7 twins on it yet, but I probably should to save myself more grief in jumping in late.

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Wednesday, after my dd read her passage, she told me that she knew what it was about but had not idea how to summarize it. She also told me that since she knew she'd have to write her summary, she refused to put some of the gross stuff in her summary then she sat up and yelled, "Eureka! The stuff about strangling the wolf and drowning him must be details!"

 

This is just to say, that it is getting better. My dd didn't have a problem with the dictation except that she writes terribly slowly. Her problem was with the summaries.

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I would say that "show and steady wins the race" so keep plugging along. My son was in tears at times when we were doing WWE2. We're now almost finished with WWE 3 and he's doing really well. No, it's not always easy but that's OK. I will often try to break down sentences into natural parts. For example, I'll tell him that the sentence contains 3 ideas and put up a finger as he comes to each part. He'll finish the first part, I'll put up a 2nd finger and ask what came next and continue on till the end. Make sense??

 

I don't know if anyone remembers the King Arthur dictation from the end of Yr. 3 and the description of Sir Ector's castle but it was long! I was worried that he would freak out but I showed it to him, we broke it down and he was able to do it! He's what I would call a struggling writer but he is getting it and getting better so I would encourage you to hang in there.

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