The Importance of Dictation Activities for Students

My sweet teacher friend shared this story, and I immediately knew we needed it for this blog post as we talk about the importance of dictation activities for students!

My daughter was in our playroom trying to write the word slide. She asked me, “Mom, how do you spell the word slide?” I was in the kitchen cooking, so I yelled to her, “/s/ /l/ /ī/ /d/ silent e.” She brought me her whiteboard to check. She read the word slide and told me the letters she had written. “Awesome job!” I told her.

Let’s look at the value of what happened. When they engaged in this quick activity (while she was making dinner), her daughter had to use her listening, writing, reading, and spelling skills to write the word she had dictated. She also got immediate feedback as they checked it together. A win all around!

Dictation is not a new idea by any means! I used it pretty consistently when I taught in the classroom during writing conferences with students, reading small group lessons, and weekly for practice. Do you use dictation in your classroom? Let’s chat about what dictation is, why it is important, and how to use it in your classroom.  

What is Dictation?

Dictation is simply writing down what someone else has said. In the classroom, it is when students write down what you have said. You may ask students to write letters representing a sound(s), a word, or a sentence.

4 Reasons to Use Dictation

1. Dictation allows students to practice reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills. They have to listen to what you are asking them to write. They have to write the letters, word(s), or sentence you are dictating. They also have to speak when they read their sentence back to you. This seemingly small activity incorporates so many areas!
2. Students also receive guidance throughout the process and corrective feedback at the end when you check. 
3. Another benefit of dictation is that it can be used across many content areas. Science, reading small groups, phonics lessons, and more!
4. Dictation also teaches students how to correctly form sentences and how to use correct conventions in their writing. They learn how to form sentences correctly when you provide the model sentence. Dictation is a great time to teach them correct letter formation, punctuation, and spacing in their writing. 

There are so many benefits to using dictation, and it can be done quickly!

4 Dictation Activities for Students 

There are many different ways to use dictation in your classroom! You could use it as a whole group activity with your phonics lesson, or you could use it in your reading small groups. An easy way to incorporate this into your reading small groups is to create a sentence that has many words with the phonics skill you practiced in the book. 

You could have your students write a sentence about what they did in science that day as part of their dictation activities for kids. This could easily be done in a science journal that they have individually!

You could ask them to write the letters that represent the review phonics sounds you have been learning. You could start a phonics journal in a simple spiral notebook. This would allow for you to keep all their dictation activities together so you can easily look back and see where they are struggling so you can plan for reteaching. You will also be able to easily see how they have grown.!

You can easily add this to your dictation activities for students, too! Begin a morning message time in your classroom each day.

In this example below, we would read our morning message together, then fill in the blank for the date. Then, we would discuss community workers we had been learning about. Finally, I would dictate some sounds and they would use their whiteboards to write the sounds and hold them up for only me to see.

Dictation Activities for Students in Small Groups

Are you looking for reading small group decodable readers that have sentences already created with dictation activities for students? I have sets of decodable readers. This skill is so important in your small group setting because it truly allows you to monitor students’ output. You get a good picture of their phonics knowledge when you get to practice a phonics skill and then immediately see if they are getting it and if old skills are sticking.

I also have decodable passages with a space for students to write a sentence you dictate to them! This is a one page activity where they can practice decoding words, reading them within a comprehensive story, answering questions for comprehension, and then writing a sentence that allows them to practice the phonics skills they have just focused on with reading. This is a great way to add more dictation activities for students to your daily routines.

Get them HERE on TeachersPayTeachers!

Get them HERE on the website shop!

Do you use dictation activities for students in your classroom? When do you use them? I’d love to hear your answers to these questions in the comments below.

pin it for later