WWE4...ds (10) having a hard time with dictation...what is "normal"

[Happy2BaMom]

We have done WWE all the way through & it has really worked well. It is still largely working well, other than the dictations have become so long that ds is really struggling and starting to hate them (as am I). I just feel they are too long...I had my husband give me one last night and I couldn't do it...it was very frustrating. I am contemplating cutting them back to what I believe to be a more reasonable level (e.g. challenging, but not to the point of "I hate this!") - say, one long sentence rather than the whole paragraph (or something like that).

 

However, the fact that these sentences are in there leads me to believe that SWB and others have used them with children in the 4th grade. So I'm wondering if I should keep pursuing the whole dictation because perhaps it will magically 'click' and he will start being able to do these.

 

What has been the experience of the hive with the WWE dictation length & children who are 10-ish?

 

Thanks!

[TarynB]

Try giving the dictation in smaller chunks. Even SWB does. Check out this

of her doing dictation with her son to see how she really does it.

[Esse Quam Videri]

 

SWB herself doing WWE 4 dictation with her 13 yo. This will help immensely :) .

[Happy2BaMom]

Thanks! I did watch that video, and it did help. However, it is a little different than "read the sentence three times and do not repeat", per the WWE instructions :-( . So I'm glad I watched it, because now I can give him more help.

[Guest PuzzlerRCS]

I have been feeling the same way. We just finished Week 19 (one dictation from the Constitution and one from the Bill of Rights) and they were incredibly hard. Between the vocabulary and the writing style, my daughter didn't even begin to understand the sentences. I had to explain all the words and then we had to discuss what the meaning was. I also broke the sentence down into its core (subj, pred, etc...) and then explained that the rest of it was just a list. Even so she (who I think is fairly good at dictation) needed to be prompted for almost every word. It was incredibly frustrating and she was in tears by the end. AAarrgghhh.....I did watch the SWB video a while back and have learned to give much more help than the "read the sentence three times..." instructions indicate, but the dictations are still becoming very difficult, much more so than at the beginning of Level 4.

 

However I also believe if others have gotten through this there must be some value to it. At a minimum I think she will be less scared of figuring out tough writing.

[HLDoll]

My son is doing WWE4 and was struggling with some of the longer passages. I've started reading each sentence to him 3 times, giving him a chance to repeat it, and then proceeding to the next sentence. Doing it this way, he can usually remember a paragraph of a few sentences, with me only reading each piece 3 times. When I tried to do the whole paragraph at once, I'd have to read it what seemed like a dozen times. I switched to this method after working with him on poetry memorization. I'd read a few lines, he'd repeat, we'd add the next few, he'd repeat from the beginning, and in no time he'd have the poem committed. But he'd never remember if I just read it through a couple times.

[hollyhock]

I may be in the minority but I don't push my kids to do the very long passages. If my kids can write a 25 word sentence from dictation by the end of WWE 4, I call that good. The instructor text recommends 25-30 words by the end so I think we're close enough. Also, I find the ability to do the longer sentences depends a lot on the sentence itself. I try not to choose ones that are very complicated.

[lulubelle]

If a dictation seems particularly hard for my ds10 I will have him try it out several times, and then if it just isn't working we will put it away and try it the next day. He always does better the next day after having heard and tried it. We have taken WWE 4 very slow.