Encoding and Dictation and Why is Matters
A couple years ago, our school district adopted a new literacy plan. In our K-2 classrooms, the small group focus was on phonics and phonemic awareness! WAHHOOOO! I was so happy!
BUT...after working through the plan for a year, I realized something huge was missing. Our students were not applying their phonics knowledge into their writing.When I really started to dissect everything and try to figure out why, I realized something. We were not actually applying it to writing. We were sorting words, we were playing games, we were segmenting phonemes, but we weren’t actually attaching it to writing.
Therefore, the students did not see the connection either. I was so frustrated with myself, for not catching it. We connected letter sounds with writing in kindergarten, why didn’t we connect our phonics skills in grades 1-2???
So, I decided to try something new. We began implementing dictation into our daily lessons and WOW, that was definitely the missing piece!
So what is dictation?
How is it connected to encoding?
How do you use it effectively in your reading groups?
Dictation is the action of saying words aloud, that can be typed or written down. I consider dictation to work in different ways.
Sound Dictation
Word Dictation
Sentence Dictation
When we ask students to dictate a sound, word, or sentence, we are actually asking them to listen orally and then translate it back to us in written code. This is a process known as encoding. Let’s take a look at a couple examples.
Sound Dictation
Sound dictation is simply having students write the sounds they hear.
Teacher: “The sound is /b/.”
Students: “/b/”
Students write “b” in their dictation notebooks. *I always ask my students to say the sound as they form the letter. This helps make it stick.
Immediate feedback is crucial. Once students have written their letter/sound, Write it on the board. Ask students to point to the sound they wrote and repeat it’s sound.
Word Dictation
When choosing words for dictation, it is important to be sure that the words you are choosing also follow the phonics patterns that you are teaching. It is also okay to add in review patterns. In fact, you should ALWAYS spiral review!
I also like to throw in a few nonsense words. If they can encode nonsense words, then know they understand the pattern.
Teacher: “The word is /bat/.”
Students: “/bat/” /b/ /a/ /t/ (segmenting each sound)
Students write “bat” in their dictation notebooks. *I always ask my students to say the sound as they form the letter. This helps make it stick.
Immediate feedback is crucial. Once students have written the word, I write it on the board. Ask students to point to the word they wrote and repeat it’s sound.
Sentence Dictation
I always try to include a sentence or two for dictation. It always depends on how much each particular group can handle. When choosing a sentence, I am careful to make sure that I only choose words or patterns that I have taught, or that I am currently teaching.
Teacher: “The sentence is Mike can ride his bike. Elbows up- Repeat the sentence with me.Mike can ride his bike.” I ask students to put up one finger for each word we say in the sentence. We repeat this process twice. For those who struggle, I ask them to draw one line for each word. Sometimes having this support and touching each line as they say the sentence will be enough support for them.
Once students have written the sentence, it is important to give them feedback. I usually do this by writing the sentence on my board and asking them to cross-check. I also take this opportunity to pull in skills such as uppercase to start, spaces in between, and punctuation to end.
Click the video below to see a sample dictation lesson!
