I was thinking this morning of a way to combine Copywork and Dictation, two pillars of Charlotte Mason's approach to language arts. Charlotte Mason advocated the use of prepared dictation for teaching spelling and grammar. I am familiar with prepared dications, as teachers at the French school I attended in middle school occasionally assigned them. A passage is given in advance, the student studies the spelling and grammar, then the teacher dictates the passage while the student writes. My idea this morning was, why not use copywork for prepared dictation passages? The approach seems efficient to me--the child practices their handwriting while learning the spelling and grammar conventions of a language, paying extra close attention because they know they will have to write the same passage from dictation later. I believe this approach could be helpful not only with English but with foreign language study as well.
I don't think my kids are quite old enough for this yet, but if anyone decides to try it out let me know how it goes!
Monday, November 10, 2008
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2 comments:
I'm pretty sure we did this in elementary school in France...
Good idea. We're not there yet, but I'll use this when we do get there. Matt has to learn how to read first. We're slooooowly making progress there. He's been really uncooperative lately, and that hasn't been helping at all. If it wasn't for the fact that I believe so thoroughly in homeschool, I'd have probably put him in school by now. I've got to figure out a way to do this without fighting him. Arrggghh!
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