Dictations with my oldest make me want to

[Nakia]

:banghead::cursing::banghead::cursing::banghead:

 

 

That is all.

[thowell]

I feel your pain!:grouphug:

[NanceXToo]

Dictation is not worth a head injury lol. Are you sure you have to do it? Can you shorten it? Try it again next year?

[Jyniffrec]

My son takes so long with dictation that I begin to nod off. I am exhausted afterwards and will even sometimes take a nap! :tongue_smilie:

 

You are not alone! ;)

[Jabberwocky]

I know what you mean. My son really didn't get much out of dictation... I hate to say. So this year we're trying a different approach.

[PeterPan]

Is this "back to school and my kid has forgotten EVERYTHING" headbanging? Or is this "It's always like this and I had forgotten how much I hated it!" headbanging?

[Xuzi]

Right there with ya, sister! Ugh!

[Nakia]

Thanks everyone. I really want dictations out of my life.

 

 

Elizabeth, it's always been this way. :(

Edited August 24, 2011 by Nakia

[Blueridge]

Have you tried 'prepared dictation', where the student is allowed ample time to read the passage and become familiar with it before having it dictated to them? That has been much more profitable here than the cold turkey method.

[Nakia]

I haven't tried that, Ginger. I use WWE 3 for dictations, and there isn't always a passage to read that contains the dictation. The dictations from from WWE 4 (we use that for narrations) are too hard for her. I really think a 6th grader should be able to do a 2 sentence dictation, but she truly can't. It is really causing a lot of trouble for us. :(

[swimmermom3]

Nakia, why don't you take a short passage from one of her favorite books? We usually started with a passage that was important to the child, spent one day on it for copywork and one day on it for dictation. We did other things to get mileage out of the passage, but that is another thread. Pay attention to what she likes during read alouds and use that. Shhhh, don't tell anybody, buy you don't have to use a particular dictation exercise just because it came with your program.

[Beth in SW WA]

Thanks everyone. I really want dictations out of my life.

 

 

Elizabeth, it's always been this way. :(

 

My older dc never did dictations. They are great writers and students. It's not a sword to die on. Just a thought.... :)

[Gailmegan]

Have you seen SWB's Youtubes doing dictation with her son? It's not nearly as painless as you would expect. At the VF conference she also said that they purpose is to train the mind to hold information, so if the child gets the right idea but switches up a word or two to not worry about it (as long as the words don't significantly impact the meaning.) Mine are pretty bad at it too, but I've definitely relaxed my expectations and it's gone much better. Oh, and it really is okay to repeat it many, many times. I even let mine do it in smaller chunks until they get better at it, but I still repeat the passage from the beginning - even the part they wrote down already.

[PeterPan]

Nakia, I'll just tell you that this age (10/11) was when we finally hit the wall and started getting some evaluations. There can actually be *reasons* for these problems (working memory, etc. etc.), and this is an age where the tasks get hard enough that they can't cover it anymore.

[Nakia]

Nakia, I'll just tell you that this age (10/11) was when we finally hit the wall and started getting some evaluations. There can actually be *reasons* for these problems (working memory, etc. etc.), and this is an age where the tasks get hard enough that they can't cover it anymore.

 

 

Can we talk about this more? Here or by pm if you want to.

[PeterPan]

Fire away. :)

[Nakia]

Okay, great. Let me see...

 

When I say that she doesn't have trouble with anything else in school, I mean it. She is brilliant at math, grammar, everything else. She is a great reader. She has her nose in a book all the time. Oh, I forgot, she has always struggled with spelling, but that is coming along now. We use Sequential Spelling, which is, incidentally, written for kids with dyslexia. I do think she is mildly dyslexic. I know we can't diagnose her right here, but she still often reverses numbers and letters when copying or writing something. It doesn't affect her greatly; it's just an annoying thing she has learned to work around.

 

Does anything I'm writing here ring a bell? Any thoughts?

[PeterPan]

I think any time you have a kid who is diverging from the norm and having a LOT more problems with something than other kids his age, it's really wise to start asking WHY. Looking back I see things I posted on the boards, things I said, that were HUGE CLUES that there were LD/2E issues going on, and NO ONE said anything to me. Would I have listened if they had? I don't know, lol. We all have to be ready.

 

So my advice is to make an inventory of EVERYTHING about the child that leaves you thunking your head or frustrated, and I mean everything. Then start reading. "The Mislabeled Child" is a good place to start, probably one of the best in fact, because it hits SO many facets. You could have one problem, many problems, no problems. But for us, it was a process of connecting the dots and seeing WHY those things had happened: why she was pencil phobic, wouldn't color, needed to run around between lessons, was wiped out after a day of ice skating, constantly said her hand hurt, couldn't catch balls, reacted to milk when she was little, etc. etc. We had LOTS of missed dots.

 

So your job is to start finding the dots and looking for connections. You could jump to the big guns with an ed or neuropsych evaluation, but those can cost $1-2K and take quite a while to get into. You might even need one. But you can figure out for yourself part of what's going on and at least get a start with that Eides (Mislabeled Child) book. Then you'll know what kind of evals you want first.

 

My other mantra is don't ignore the eyes. There can be lots of things going on, but I just think it's one of those obvious things to eliminate. http://www.covd.org You can get a regular exam with screening by a developmental optometrist, or you can get a full exam. Like I said, to me the eyes are just the thing you eliminate. Sooner or later cross that off the list.

 

Just start looking at the dots, connecting them, and see what you want to get evaluated first.

[PeterPan]

nm

Edited August 24, 2011 by OhElizabeth

[Nakia]

Perhaps I am feeling a bit defensive, but I didn't really think it was all that funny. I didn't say she "can't spell". I said she struggled with spelling until we found the right program. I don't think that's really all that odd. I said I have always thought she might have mild dyslexia because of the reversals, but I do not have a diagnosis. I'm not all that knowledgeable about dyslexia. I do know her vision is fine.

 

Thanks for the information.

[PeterPan]

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you.

 

If you've done or considered the developmental optometrist, then you're left with an ed or neuropsych eval and reading.

Edited August 24, 2011 by OhElizabeth

[Dina in Oklahoma]

Nakia ~

 

Here is the link for the program Blueridge referenced. We were so pleased with book 4 (the 1rst one we used) that I bought the other two at our HS convention.

 

Best Wishes, Dina :001_smile:

 

http://simplycharlottemason.com/books/spelling-wisdom/

[NanceXToo]

My older dc never did dictations. They are great writers and students. It's not a sword to die on. Just a thought.... :)

 

:iagree:

I've never done dictation with my daughter (nearly 11). She scored in like the 98th percentile in the language arts portion of her last standardized test, reads at over an 8th grade level, does reasonably well with her writing assignments (not that I have anybody her age to compare her writing with but I think it's pretty on target) and so on. And we don't do dictation or written narrations or sentence diagramming or anything like that. I think that if some things just aren't working for you or your kid and are starting to cause misery, and they aren't really imperative things, it really is okay to decide to just not do it!

 

Thanks everyone. I really want dictations out of my life.

 

So.... put them out of your life. :)

[Hedgehog]

This may not be at all helpful, because I don't know what you've already tried, but what worked best for us (and got DD9 going with dictation) was for me to dictate a very small portion of her own narration that she had done earlier that day. We read it together first, and then I dictated it to her. Lots of hand-holding and repeating - I'm not struck on the idea of only saying it twice or three times, IOE it needed a lot more repetition than that. Then we used a book she'd read a few times over or listened to, and finally a portion of text she wasn't familiar with (from WWE). HTH.

[ThatCyndiGirl]

A few thoughts:

 

If you are 100% sure that she has perfect vision (even if that means 20/20 CORRECTED, which is fine) then I would move on to the dyslexia possibility. While some people tend to think that kids are OVER diagnosed I tend to think that perhaps they are UNDER diagnosed and that not all kids with such a diagnosis would necessarily warrant "clinical intervention". I write backwards which MAY (I'm not sure) be somewhat dyslexic. Does she write backwards, as in whole words or does she reverse only some letters/numbers?

 

She can narrate just fine what she has read, correct? So comprehension is not the issue here, it is transcribing what YOU say, right? (Yes, I know what dictation means, just making sure that we are on the right page.)

 

Does she independantly write what she wants, such as in notes, lists, etc? Or does she lack confidence there? Does SHE seem to be concerned about this or is it solely YOUR concern? (What I mean is that, is it bothering her or is she able to express herself in writing when SHE wants to.) :grouphug:

[Jaz]

One thing that helped my ds work toward longer dictations/narrations is to use a voice recorder on his mp3 player.

 

I would read a sentence, and he would repeat it into the recorder. Repeat. Repeat. Then, when he needed to write the 2-3 sentences, he could replay his own voice (and I wouldn't have to be there ;) ) as often as needed. It really worked well and now he doesn't need it any longer.