Using Ordinary Notebook Paper Day 7: Dictation & Grammar

 Welcome to iHN's Hopscotch at Blog, She Wrote! My topic for the 10 day series is Ten Ways to Use Ordinary Notebook Paper. Thank you for joining me. Please take a moment to subscribe, so you don't miss out- you can follow, subscribe by email or RSS feed (just look to the right!) and follow Blog, She Wrote on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest. I'd love it if you'd stay connected and visit again!
 

Today's notebook paper topic is: Dictation. Many of you may be familiar with using dictation with students to improve their writing skills. Using copywork and then dictation for language arts is a natural extension of our literature unit studies. Using well written books is a great way to introduce children to grammar and the next best tool for the job is your well stocked pile of notebook paper!

I choose a few sentences or more typically a paragraph from a book we are reading and I read it aloud to my student. His job is to write down the sentence as he hears it and then I add a grammar exercise to it on the second day.

It may take some time for your student to catch on to listening and writing. I don't mind repeating myself as we build this skill, but eventually I will not repeat the sentence and once we've finished, I edit the paragraph. The following day I add some grammar questions to call out some skills.

I choose the paragraph based on what my student needs work on- I can always find a great example of the use of a comma or possessive nouns when I need one.

Once we go over the grammar questions and activities, I have the student rewrite the paragraph with any corrections. It's a nice way to tidy up the lesson.

If you'd like to know what resources I use as a reference tool for grammar, please see the list in this post called Thoughts on Grammar. 

Thanks for joining me!

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Please visit the other bloggers participating in iHN's Hopscotch over the next two weeks. While you are taking a look at the other Hopscotchers, check out the Pin It to Win It giveaways sponsored by Prufrock Press.
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