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copywork vs dictation


trisharog
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I am a little confused about how often to do copywork vs. dictation.Until a light bulb just went off a moment ago(its almost midnight so it is a dim bulb right now)I had been thinking that by this time, 4th grade DS, would be doing only dictation and not copywork. However, in reading over posts tonight , I think we do are supposed to both. This will be my first year to HS so I am trying to get all of your best practices down and really appreciate all the input so many have had on my many posts.

Jessica at Trivium Academy had great copywork from SOTW2 for her second grader posted on her website. I dont know if sentence is long enough for a 4th grader or if it should be a paragraph by this age. I remember reading someting about this in TWTM but I thought it was dictation only at this age.

Thanks and goodnight!

Trisha

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Actually I think its up to you. From my memory, TWTM replaces copywork with dictation once dictation has begun, with copywork being optional after dictation is begun. That is probably the most efficient way to do things.

For some kids, copywork is continued for the purposes of handwriting practice- that has certainly been the case for my son, with copywork at times alternating with a handwriting book. He is 12 and still does copywork for the purposes of handwriting practice and it is working- his handwriting is finally becoming good.

Charlotte Mason people tend to continue copywork all the way through, as well as dictation. Copywork becomes a Commonplace Book in later years, with interesting quotes added from books they are reading.

So, there are many ways to do it.

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we do copywork/dictation still with my 9th grader. It's a lot more than the typical copywork. We do Shakespeare, sonnets, poetry, portions of plays, literature passages from books we are reading, things like that.

 

I dictate the passage to her cold on Monday. By looking at her mistakes, I can tell what skills she needs help with and we work on those all week. She copys the passage all week during her studies and then we dictate again on Friday. By then, she should be able to do it without mistakes. Sometimes, I have her copy the grammar rule or punctuation rule that goes with the mistakes she has made.

 

Anyway, that's what we do.

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I am a little confused about how often to do copywork vs. dictation.Until a light bulb just went off a moment ago(its almost midnight so it is a dim bulb right now)I had been thinking that by this time, 4th grade DS, would be doing only dictation and not copywork. However, in reading over posts tonight , I think we do are supposed to both. This will be my first year to HS so I am trying to get all of your best practices down and really appreciate all the input so many have had on my many posts.

Jessica at Trivium Academy had great copywork from SOTW2 for her second grader posted on her website. I dont know if sentence is long enough for a 4th grader or if it should be a paragraph by this age. I remember reading someting about this in TWTM but I thought it was dictation only at this age.

Thanks and goodnight!

Trisha

 

We merge copywork into dictation once the child is ready.

 

copywork = imitating writing skills (punctuation, capitalization, spacing between words, spelling, proper grammar) from something the child can see.

 

dictation = practicing writing skills from something the child cannot see (words heard from the dictator, and held in the mind until it's written down). This replaces copywork once child is comfortable with the copywork skills. We also use dictation as penmanship practice.

 

Since you mention reading TWTM, I'll say that SWB's new book, Writing With Ease, is the fleshing out of all the copywork/dictation and narration she wrote about in WTM. Four years worth. :)

 

hth

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