Should my son write dictation exactly as it appears line by line?
We are new to Heart of Dakota (HOD), and it has been such a good homeschool year. My son is making good progress in his spelling, which is encouraging as he is not naturally good at spelling. Dictation is really helping! My son will have this passage from the Star Spangled Banner coming up in his dictation, and it is formatted a little oddly. I noticed in HOD’s notebooking pages that it is not formatted this way, so I am wondering if my son needs to write it exactly this way when he does dictation. If he doesn’t, that would be great! This is exactly how it is written for dictation:
O, say, can you see, by the dawn’s early
light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s
last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars,
through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so
gallantly streaming?
I think he will have a hard time remembering all the commas as well as which words go on the separate lines, since it doesn’t follow a logical pattern. I don’t want to make him do this so exactly if it isn’t necessary. Thanks for the help!
Sincerely,
“Ms. Does Dictation Have to Be Written Exactly Line by Line?”
Dear “Ms. Does Dictation Have to Be Written Exactly Line by Line?”,
With poetry in dictation, or with any dictation passage, I don’t worry about my sons having the same number of words on each line as the passage in the guide. I just worry about the punctuation, capitalization, and spelling being the same as that in the guide.
This is because the formatting for the passages in the guide is dependent on space, and so is the child’s writing. Different kiddos can fit more words on a line than other kiddos, simply due to the size of their writing. Also, not having the same number of words on a line as the guide is not technically an error (i.e. like the error of omitting a punctuation mark, or capital letter, or spelling a word incorrectly).
Blessings,
Carrie
