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Dictation is a powerful routine that you can use to help improve spelling with any child. My favorite thing about dictation is that it requires nothing more than a piece of paper and a pencil. With no fancy materials, we can provide children an activity that will deliver results daily.
Dictation, in its simplest form, is telling students what you want them to write. For the most part, this occurs during the word study/word work portion of a lesson. It could be just a few dictated words, or you may tell them complete sentences you want them to write. I was never taught about dictation when I was in my pre-service program. In fact, I “grew up” thinking that we shouldn’t tell children what to write.
I used to think that telling students what to write was boring and took away their agency as writers. If I began telling them what to write, then they would never become the kind of writers who were bursting with ideas, ready to write them down and share them with the world.
And while I do believe in some choice for students when writing pieces in writing class, I also know now there is no shame in telling children what to write. If we want them to become more proficient in a specific phonics pattern, we need to ask them to write that orthographic feature multiple times for it to stick. If we want our children to use a variety of different sentence structures, we have to both teach the structures and require our children to practice them. We cannot leave spelling to the world of mini-lessons where we spout things like “today and every day, use ai to spell /a/ in the middle of a syllable.” We need to be explicit in our instruction, and we need to be purposeful in the spelling practice we ask our children to complete.
Basic dictation only requires a writing tool and a writing surface. You can use dry erase boards, composition books, or loose-leaf paper. I like to buy the half-sized composition books. I use primary-lined ones for my younger students, and wide-ruled ones for older ones. Because we do not do a ton of dictation daily, the half-size notebooks are perfect. Plus, the kids think it’s cool which is an automatic engagement factor.
Before dictation, I ask my students to write their alphabet. Then, underneath that, I have them write 1-5. Next, I tell them the words I want them to spell. When I am dictating to students, I always ask them to repeat the word and say the sounds as they write. If it is a particularly tricky word, we will tap the sounds together before they spell on their own.
As students are spelling the words, I remind them to say the sounds. Then, we go over each spelled word. I spell the correct word for the students on the board or with a projector, asking them to fix any incorrect spellings. Typically, we go over the words one at a time instead of waiting for all of the dictated words to be finished. This way, we are giving feedback and correcting as close as possible to the time of error.
When you are dictating words, include both current orthographic features and previously taught ones. The way we get words to stick is by continuing to practice them. If we only practice a skill of the week, we do not give previous skills a chance to “get sticky” in our students’ brains.
I used to Google each week to find out which words I wanted to use for dictation practice. I ended up making my own set of dictation word lists. If you want to make your life easier, I suggest you check out the 89 word lists I’ve already made!
While I regularly use composition books for dictation, I also use sound boxes. Sound boxes are a scaffold we can use to help children strengthen their knowledge of sound-symbol correspondences.
Why are they helpful? Sound boxes force students to think about the letters that represent sounds. Each box represents a single sound, no matter how many letters make up that sound. It helps to eliminate extraneous letters, and asks students to really focus on the sound-symbol correspondences they’ve been taught.
If I use sound boxes, I do not also use the dictation in the composition books the same day. I do not want to overwhelm students!
One thing I learned about dictation in my Orton-Gillingham training is this: when you are dictating sentences, you do not repeat the sentence word by word. If you want your children to write the sentence “The shark swam to shore when it got dark”, you repeat the entire sentence every time someone needs to know the next word.
Why? Say you give them the sentence. Kyle writes “The” then asks you what word comes next. After you tell him “shark” he asks the same thing. You soon find yourself dictating word by word the entire sentence. At that point, you’re no longer dictating a sentence, you’re once again doing word-level dictation.
We want our students to be able to hold and entire sentence in their brain, then write it down. This is not as easy a task as one would think. When I’m asking students to write an entire sentence, this is what I have them do:
One additional scaffold I will provide when students are doing dictation at the sentence level is drawing lines. The sentence above about sharks had 9 words. If I have students who struggle to keep the entire sentence in their head, I will draw the 9 lines for them on their paper. Then, I ask them to touch each line while saying the words before they begin to write their sentence.
Dictation shouldn’t stop with single-syllable words in a primary classroom. Dictation can and should continue with more advanced orthographic features as students are taught roots and affixes in their word study class.
The routines you follow for multisyllabic dictation can be the EXACT same routine you use for single-syllables. Half-sized composition books (without the dotted lines) make a great tool for students’ dictation notebooks. The only difference is we are now asking students to write multiple syllables instead of one.
When we dictate multisyllabic words, I ask the students to repeat the word, then we identify the number of syllables. Finally, I ask students to say the syllables as they are spelling (at this point, they are past individual sounds!) You’ll notice I ask my students to repeat words A LOT before we spell them. I do this because it is an easy way to ensure that students both know the word and are pronouncing it properly.
You can also use sound boxes for multisyllabic decoding. Instead of having each box represent a single sound, each box would represent a single syllable or meaning part.
When students are dictating at the multisyllabic level, we don’t want them to say each sound as they are spelling. Think how tedious it would be to spell a word with 15 sounds if you had to sound out each one. Instead, at this point I ask students to say the syllables as they are writing. They should be automatic at the individual sound level, so I always ask students to whisper the syllables as they are spelling.
My #1 tip for helping students with multisyllabic dictation is this: teach students that every syllable must have a written vowel. This one tip can make a huge difference for our students.
Let’s face it: English vowel sounds aren’t always spelled the way children (or adults) think they should be spelled. In some syllables, you can barely even hear a vowel sound (looking at you shark and literally every consonant + le word). When we teach children that every syllable must have a written vowel, things change.
Say I want my children to spell the word disinterested. Because we repeat the word and decide how many syllables there are, my children KNOW there must be at least 5 vowels. If using sound boxes, children will know that each of those boxes has to have a vowel. Try it, I promise it’ll be worth your time when you see the improvement in spelling!
While you don’t need anything fancy for dictation, there’s definitely some things out there that can make dictation fun. When you are dictating words day after day, I’ll admit engagement can wane. Here are some things I’ve done to make it more engaging for students.
Each of these activities just adds a little variety and excitement to writing, while still asking students to spell. A word of caution, however: we want children to be successful in the medium in which they are required to be successful. Dry erase boards and shaving cream are nice, but that’s not how we write. We want students to be writing weekly on paper, and eventually learning to type.
Dictation shouldn’t be a labor-intensive task for you or students. When we practice dictation daily, it becomes a part of the day, like packing up to go to resource, recess, and language arts. We don’t need a fancy dog and pony show, although we could all use a little variety and excitement from time to time. The most important consideration is ensuring that all students have time daily to practice the orthographic features they’ve been taught.
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Savannah Campbell is a K-5 reading specialist. She has taught her entire 12-year teaching career at the school she went to as a child. She holds two master’s degrees in education from the College of William and Mary. Savannah is both Orton-Gillingham and LETRS trained. Her greatest hope in life is to allow all children to live the life they want by helping them to become literate individuals.
Savannah Campbell is a K-5 reading specialist. She has taught her entire 12-year teaching career at the school she went to as a child. She holds two master’s degrees in education from the College of William and Mary. Savannah is both Orton-Gillingham and LETRS trained. Her greatest hope in life is to allow all children to live the life they want by helping them to become literate individuals.
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