Let's Talk LA -- Dictation

[kolamum]

What's your favourite LA programme that uses dictation to teach LA/grammar. I'm not too eager to try Braverwriter/The Arrow, merely because the child I want to use this with isn't quite up to par on reading the books often used over there. BUT, if I were to buy Bravewriter would it teach me how to do this myself?

 

I'm just curious. I do have a new SL Core, but it's not actually in my hot little hands yet, so I'm curious to see how they have chosen to utalize this way of teaching too.

[stripe]

That's the idea behind Bravewriter. I get the impression some contingent of customers wanted something premade and/ or she wanted another product line, but the author doesn't really claim those particular products (Wand, Arrow) are required.

[kolamum]

Do you think Bravewriter is worth the price asked?

 

Hard copy or ecopy? Etc. :D

[kolamum]

I should have said:

 

Writer's Jungle. ;)

 

Anyone know how many pages that is??

[stripe]

You can get the PDF at a 50% discount ($39.50 + 1.95 fee) through the Homeschool Buyers Coop.

https://www.homeschoolbuyersco-op.org/brave-writer/?c=1

[kolamum]

You can get the PDF at a 50% discount ($39.50 + 1.95 fee) through the Homeschool Buyers Coop.

https://www.homeschoolbuyersco-op.org/brave-writer/?c=1

 

WOW!! That's a deal. I wonder how many pages it'll take to print & bind the thing. :lol: Also makes me wonder if I should snag the highschool part .. ho-hum, must think on it.

[Momof2littles]

My two cents as a former professional teacher, why not have your child work on authentic pieces of writing and teach grammar through their own work? This ia a much more effective way to teach grammar rather than dictation.

 

Ignore me if you want. I like to save children busy work and myself money. :)

[stripe]

Just to clarify - Brave Writer is not about dictation. She does have a product that takes regular, good quality literature and uses it to illustrate various things, not merely grammar, also literary elements, and not only through dictation, but she is very clear that we can use our own examples. It's merely a simplification for those who don't have time or comfort level to do it themselves.

 

As to the binder vs. PDF, given that you live in Australia, I think it makes more sense to get the PDF. With the discount and lack of shipping fees, you could afford to get the book printed out. It doesn't cost too much to get a simple binding, I don't think, maybe $5?, but you'd have to check the shops around you.

[MerryAtHope]

How old is the child, is she behind in reading, and how is her spelling? That would greatly affect my answer. Merry :-)

[kolamum]

He is 11, 4th grade. Spelling & reading are so-so. We learned this year that he has a vision problem so reading small print is HARD for him. We've purchased a kindle so he can read grade level books with slightly larger font, but it hasn't arrived yet.

 

Spelling is probably this child's worst subject & we're working through that with Sequential Spelling & making headway. I'm quite impressed with the leaps & bounds made in a short time with this simple programme.

 

 

Here's the thing.. This child knows what a verb, noun, pronoun, & adverb are. He knows how to capitalize things & what things should be capitalized. He knows about onomatopoeia, personification, italics, & so on. He's learned a lot in that area. Most of it from the use of copywork & good books. Madlibs played a huge part in his knowledge of parts of speech, as did the curriculum we used when he was younger.

 

He wants to learn to write.. preferably stories & books. I don't know if this is his calling in life or something he wants to do to "be like Mum". That & he's naturally curious about trying out new things.

 

I'm aware that TWJ is about writing, that's okay I'm good with that. I could use that. :D

 

I've provided the child with a spiral bound notebook to "write a story in". He needed help getting started, so I wrote half a sentence & this child took off with it. I was in awe of the vocabulary he used, also thanks to the curriculum we've previously & currently using. Vocabulary has always been a big part of our life. There were a few mechanics that could use work & I'm cool with that, but I think I need my hand held as I walk this new path. ;)

 

Now, I do own, & have used, Spelling Wisdom in the past. I liked it, but I purchased it to help with his spelling more then for the dictation aspects of it. I'm thinking if I purchased TWJ to encourage me in teaching him to write, because that's my long term goal. I want him to be able to write with confidence & ability. Children here don't learn to diagram sentences & nonsense like that {my dh gave it the term nonsense & was aghast when I tore a sentence apart with lines & diagrams, he'd never in his life seen anything like it before}, but they are required to write & write well.

 

The knowledge my son has in regards to certain things like personification & onomatopoeia his ps cousin's didn't learn until highschool. He was showing them something he'd done on the personification front.. I'd given him googley eyes and pictures & told him to personify things. They were all laughing over it, but his 14 year old cousin said she was shocked he knew what it was because she'd only just learned it last week. :unsure:

 

I'm not saying any of that to doubt the leaning she had in her school! She is very capable of writing & does a terrific job. She's now in University with honors & so on. But, the one thing that stuck out to me was that the meagre things my son knew were the "finer" points they were being taught.

 

Which leaves me wondering this year. What else do I need to teach him? Bottom line. Writing. I want to be CERTAIN & SURE that this child CAN write when he's at university level. I have a bil who is abhorred by the amount of children at that level who can't, I don't want my son's professors to say the same thing about him! :lol: The majority of their grades seem to come from the papers they write.

 

So, does that help shed light on my situation?

[MerryAtHope]

The few times I used SL LA, they didn't focus a lot on pointing out figurative language, but sometimes I did that on my own. I would find a passage in their reader that was beautifully written, use that for copywork or dictation, and teach it over several days. One day you can focus on caps & punctuation, one day on spelling patterns, a few days on figurative language--whatever you want to pull out of the passage. You can get a lot of mileage out of it. The one caveat I'll add is that you make sure the copywork/dictation is not above his phonics understanding as it relates to spelling, or not much. I've seen copywork backfire because a child didn't understand how the letters were teaming up, and instead of thinking in terms of sounds, they start to copy letter by letter as if it was a phone number. When they do that, it can actually undermine both reading and spelling. So make sure that you preteach any new patterns and have him say the sounds as he writes (sounds or syllables or words--but you don't want him to think in terms of letter names or one letter at a time separate from the sound and function in the word).

 

Anyway...since you'll have SL LA, start there and see what you think of the assignments. If you are wanting to focus more on figurative language, you can google a list and as you preread his readers, you can find good examples.

 

Bravewriter usually has a free sample of their newsletters, try downloading that to get an idea both of how they do it and what can be done. That might be enough to get your juices going.

 

BW also has their free email loop, the bravewriter lifestyle, that you might like.

 

Merry :-)

[Farrar]

If you have an ereader or iPad or something, I wouldn't bother printing The Writer's Jungle... it's not something most people would need a hard copy of (making the binder thing all the more mysterious to me).

 

All The Arrow does is select passages for you to use for dictation. It's not that hard to do yourself. The Writer's Jungle does have some nice parts that talk about dictation and how to structure it. I think she recommends doing it once a week. However, if you read the whole thing, I doubt that will be the main takeaway. It's just one piece of the program, or, um... lifestyle.

[kolamum]

If you have an ereader or iPad or something, I wouldn't bother printing The Writer's Jungle... it's not something most people would need a hard copy of (making the binder thing all the more mysterious to me).

 

All The Arrow does is select passages for you to use for dictation. It's not that hard to do yourself. The Writer's Jungle does have some nice parts that talk about dictation and how to structure it. I think she recommends doing it once a week. However, if you read the whole thing, I doubt that will be the main takeaway. It's just one piece of the program, or, um... lifestyle.

 

Yea, I did wonder about the binder. I do have an ipad, but I'm printing it anyway. Too much exposure to screen time gives me migraines & since I have a ProClick I'm printing & binding.. I'd have been done by now, but ran out of ink & had to wade through the masses of guys shopping for mother's day to locate ink. :lol:

[HiddenJewel]

I think I must be missing something but isn't dictation used for spelling, not grammar?

Edited May 12, 2012 by HiddenJewel

[kolamum]

You can read about it from many sources.. :)

 

Off the top of my head I suggest checking out the Simply Charlotte Mason website & their info on dictation. In short, a child would copy a passage {studied is how we do it} a couple of times during the week. You'd use that passage to explain things within it.

 

A passage including terms "like or as" to describe something would give you the ability to speak about simile. Anything including dialogue would give you the ability to use it as an example of how quotes & commas are used in such an instance. Dates, numbers, punctuation, anything really.. As the child uses it for copywork & dictation you'd explain the mechanics of it.

 

This is how my 5th grader has learned all his grammar/LA aside from parts of speech. He can point things out or describe what I mean when asked. Yet he's had no formal textbook training. :D

 

I think, as someone was wise to point out to me, I need to keep on keeping on with this using passages that include things he might not be familiar with, & teach him to write. :D

[mysticmomma]

S

[Ellie]

Grammar Works teaches grammar with dictation. The children make notebooks not unlike the Spalding notebooks.