dictation with dyslexic??

[momto3innc]

My 7 yo son has been diagnosed as severely dyslexic. He received OG help 3x a week last year and I'm continuing it this year (I was certified this summer). He also has vision therapy. Overall we're seeing good, consistent improvement.

 

For LA, we do a combination of OG phonics/reading, AAS, FLL, and WWE. Last year all worked great. His reading is FAR better than his spelling/writing.

This year in second grade all is still working fine...except we started WWE 2 this week. The narration was fine (I write it for him) and copywork OK but the first dictation was a disaster. First of all Bauer says it's not about spelling and to help them with any words they ask for help on. Well he asked how to spell virtually every word...which meant there was no way he could keep the sentence in his head. We do dictation with AAS--should I just ditch the dictation with WWE or keep up with it? It's really our main writing so I feel like I should keep it...it just in no way felt like a dictation this week.

I guess overall I'm just concerned with his writing. When I write what he dictates to me his writing is great...I guess I'm just not sure how I move past that. How do I help his writing improve? I like the idea of WWE but as I look ahead in the book I just don't know if he'll be able to do it unless I write all narrations for him and change the dictated sentences to only words he can spell...and I don't know if that completely gets rid of the point of it??

Any thoughts?

[Tokyomarie]

My dyslexic son was totally unable to do dictation of whole sentences, and most certainly not sentences at grade level, at that point in his development. We stuck with copywork for a long, long time, with dictation only at the individual word level for spelling.

[PeterPan]

I would break out the narration part of WWE, do that, and skip the dictation part for a while, a good long while. Not only does it require their spelling to be there (enough for it to be in-reach), but it's pulling on working memory, etc. That's just not going to be reality for some kids for a while. I don't think my dd could do the 4th gr dictation now if I tried, not the way SWB says, because she doesn't have the working memory. That's just reality. It'd be nice to get it up, and it's something we're aware of. The narrations you're doing there (oral, etc.) ARE valuable and don't have to be hindered by his spelling, so keep doing that. But just let the dictation amounts, lengths, etc. go in one ear and out the other. They DON'T apply to your kid.

 

Better dictation for this age? Well just use your good judgment and find something or make something that is JUST SLIGHTLY above where he's at. Ie. he knows 80% of it and would find the added punctuation mark or whatever a pleasant stretch. That's what you're looking for. For instance, what if you used some literature like the Little Bear books? Or Dr. Seuss? I used Mother Goose stuff for my dd one year, right about that age. So you're getting more mature sentence construction, some nice inclusion of punctuation and grammar patterns, but you're still within his reach. That's where you want to be.

 

If dictating those younger sources seems to childish to him, make it pop a bit. For instance you can google or buy shape paper with lines to fit the theme. So if he's taking dictation from Little Bear, make him bear-shaped paper with lines. :)

[Quiver0f10]

My dyslexic son was totally unable to do dictation of whole sentences, and most certainly not sentences at grade level, at that point in his development. We stuck with copywork for a long, long time, with dictation only at the individual word level for spelling.

 

:iagree: My dyslexic son used WWE 2 last year and we dropped dictation for the same reasons as the OP. We do narration and copywork.

[PeterPan]

BTW, it's ok (and great!) that his reading is so much better than his spelling. It's the great irony that sometimes these kids are also visual learners. So eventually, with the VT and whatnot, that vision starts to kick in and help them. My dd is a fairly average speller at this point, just about on grade-level, but what she does know she mainly knows from SEEING the words: seeing them when she reads, seeing them when she writes. (I have her read back the sentences she writes from dictation to give her the chance to SEE the words again, in context, correctly.) So where things might be a little crunchy now, they might start to come together for him later. My dd learns much better with context and use. So doing the isolated spelling never gets the words to stick. It's good for the thought process, but the words don't actually STICK that way. It's when she uses them in interesting contexts that they start to stick. That's why I was recommending the bear-shaped paper and fun uses. Michael Gravois has adorable stuff. You WANT him writing and using those words, especially if he's a visual learner.

 

Conversely, my dh is an auditory learner. So with him I probably would have done the oral spelling using Freed's recommendations in "Right-Brained Child in a Left-Brained World." I'm still waiting to try them out on my dd to see what happens. My dh, from whom dd got her genes, also says spell-check on the computer has helped his spelling immensely. It's not just that it corrects it, but that it actually helps them learn/re-learn. So go figure. He's not going to be limited to what you do now or the frustrations you feel now. That shift has surprised me, which is why I toss it out.

[momto3innc]

THanks so much for all the advice. He really enjoys all the other parts of WWE so we'll keep those, drop the WWE dictation and just do the dictation that goes with AAS which is appropriate for his spelling level (we always keep AAS at his spelling level, not reading level). That's definitely the right thing...I just needed to think about it for a bit. Thanks for helping me process!

[cjshima]

I did WWE with my daughter for the first time last year and was getting frustrated with the dictation also. She definitely can't keep whole passages in her head. I break it into small parts and she does Ok.

[Melissa in Australia]

My very dyslexic son aged 13 is doing the dictation in WWE3. and loving it. There was no way he could have done it at 7. In fact right up to last year he didn't even notice when he had a book upside down or the right way up. We did a huge amount of copy work, including working through all grammar lessons together, with me writing his answers down on the board, and him copying them into his book.

[rafiki]

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