Great points, Dianne. Thanks.

Sorry about that! Please try again, Kirsten, and let us know if the problem is still occurring with the troubleshooting portion of this blog post.

Andrea,
Twelve dictation sentences is really a lot for any student to do in a single setting. It is better for most students to break them up over two or three days, so they don’t tire but also so they can focus more fully on each one to get it as correct as they possibly can. In addition, for learning to transfer from short term memory to long term memory, time has to pass. Teaching an entire step in one day and then moving on doesn’t allow the concepts to settle in deeply. Some kids are fine with that, but most do better if they spend two to four days (or even more if needed) per step.

Consider breaking up the dictation over at least two days. Then glance through the step and see how you can break up what is covered into two. I, personally, jump right into the new teaching when starting a new step (after reviewing the cards), so that we get to the new word cards to help my student be prepared for the dictation sentences. You would work through the step for about ten minutes and then do half of the dictation. The next day you would then do all the review sort of work in the lesson (analyzing words, homophone list, etc) and anything else left, and then finish with the rest of the dictation.

Another option would be to still be finishing the previous step’s dictation while working in the next step’s teaching. This may actually be better, as it has you reviewing past concepts through the dictation while working on the new concepts in the new step.

Starting in step 14 of All About Spelling 3, there is a new activity at the end of every step. This is called “Writing Station” and in it, you will read five words. Your student will write down those five words as you read them off and then he will write his own unique sentences using those words (he can do a sentence per word or can use more than one word in a sentence, it’s up to him). For most kids, this activity is too much to do after doing dictation as well. So, starting in step 14, you may consider spreading each step out to three days to allow room for this activity too.

My kids struggle with spelling, so we need more time on each step not only to master the concept but also to review more and allow everything to sink in. So, we spend four days on each step. We do a bit of each step each day and four dictation sentences for three days. By the fourth day, there is often very little left in the step to do, maybe just read a word bank or something, and then the Writing Station. That’s fine. My kids like a lighter, shorter day once in a while.

Oh, and we always start each day’s lesson with reviewing the cards. As my kids need more review, we review some of the mastered cards in each section as well as the ones behind the review tabs each day. We review 2 each of the yellow, red, and blue mastered cards and 5 of the green mastered cards each day. This, of course, takes a bit more time each day and helps stretch each step out to the four days we spend on it.

I don’t think you need to break up each step to four days necessarily, but spreading it out over more than one day is probably best. Keep in mind that All About Spelling level 7 is the last level and it covers through high school level words. You have plenty of time to finish all the levels well before high school.

I hope this gives you the clarity you need, but please let me know if you need further explanation or have more questions.

Kelly,
I am sorry to hear your son is struggling with reading, but I do think All About Reading can help. It was specially designed to take the struggle out of learning to read!

Here are some ways that All About Reading can help kids that have struggled to learn to read:

– Each lesson time is simple and explicit, and will include 3 simple steps: review of what was learned the day before, a simple new teaching, and a short practice of that new teaching.

– Incremental lessons. AAR breaks every teaching down into its most basic steps and then teaches the lessons in a logical order, carrying the students from one concept or skill to the next. Each step builds on the one the student has already mastered.

– AAR is multisensory. Research has shown that when a child is taught through all three pathways at the same time, a method known as simultaneous multisensory instruction, he will learn significantly more than when taught only through his strongest pathway.

– AAR uses specially color-coded letter tiles. Working with the All About Reading letter tiles can make the difference between understanding or not understanding a concept.

– AAR is scripted, so you can concentrate on your child. The script is very clear, without excess verbiage.

– AAR has built-in review in every lesson. Children with learning difficulties generally need lots of review in order to retain concepts. With AAR, your child will have a Reading Review Box so you can customize the review. This way, you can concentrate on just the things that your child needs help with, with no time wasted on reviewing things that your child already knows.

– AAR has lots of fluency practice. One of the things that Marie, the author, noticed when she was researching reading programs is that few programs have enough review built in for kids who struggle to gain fluency. AAR has fluency sheets or a story to be read with every lesson, so children can practice reading smoothly with expression and confidence.

All About Reading has a one-year “Go Ahead and Use It” guarantee. You can try it for up to a year, and if for any reason you feel that it isn’t the right match for your child, return it for a full refund.

I hope this helps! Please let me know if you have additional questions, need help with placement, or anything else.

Becky,
This is so great to hear! Thank you for sharing your daughter’s improvement with dictation with us.

That’s great to hear, Dori!

I’m pleased this article has helped you in this way, Shelley. I understand how easy it is to forget the whys behind what we do and it’s good to be reminded.

Joseph,
In the USA, each of the 50 states set their own educational standards. Some do adopt outside standards that other states have adopted, but there has never been a time when all the states followed the same standards throughout (even when the Federal government was attaching Federal funding to the implementation of Common Core standards, some states still chose to not use those standards but kept their own). Because what is required may vary from state to state, your question is difficult to answer.

Writing from dictation is not very common a public schools in the USA. I am sure there are some schools that do use dictation, or some teachers that do, but I was publically educated in California and I never wrote a single sentence in English from dictation in twelve years. However, I did do dictation while I was learning a second language (Spanish) in the last four years of my schooling and it was done weekly.

We at All About Learning Press feel that dictation is very important as it provides not only a means to assess students, but also serves as a cumulative review of what they have learned. Starting about a third of the way through the first level, and continuing through all seven levels, every lesson in All About Spelling includes twelve or more dictation passages (the length and complexity of the dictation increases with each level). However, we don’t recommend grading dictation. Grades imply that regardless of what grade the student receives, they have to move on. We use dictation to assess whether students are ready to move on to new concepts, or if they need to continue reviewing until they have achieved mastery. A “C” grade is considered passing, but we feel a student that has only mastered 70% of the dictation needs further review. This blog article has more information about this mastery-based approach to learning.