Letter 22
DICTATED STORIES AND READING DEVELOPMENT
Dear Parents and Care-Givers:
The dictated story is one of the most important strategies to develop literacy with your child. A dictated story is an oral story
told by individual children while adults write it down. Thus, adults attend to the handwriting, spelling, and grammar issues.
Dictated stories are useful in a number of ways in order to promote oral language, reading, and writing development of your
child.
1. Oral Language: When your child is provided frequent opportunities to tell and dictate stories (once or twice a week),
their oral language usually grows dramatically. Through dictation, your child can experiment with different story
structures such as narratives, fantasy, poetry, and informational pieces. As well, they become familiar with story elements
of literature (characters, problems, events, and solutions) and frequently use these structures in their dictated stories.
2. Reading: Dictating stories also contributes to your child’s reading ability. Through the process of dictation, your child
will make the connection between speech and reading, as they realize that what they orally compose can be written down
and read back. As you write the story down, your child becomes aware that letters of the alphabet are used to record their
stories; that print is read in a left-to-right direction; and that there are spaces between clumps of print called ‘words.’
Over time, with opportunities to dictate a new story once or twice each week, your child will eventually begin to
recognize familiar phrases, sentences, and words as they read their dictated stories themselves.
3. Writing: Dictated stories build the foundation for story writing. As your child tells their stories, they are developing
composing skills, which parallel those required for composing their own stories. Through dictation your child is
introduced to grammar and usage as they observe you capitalize names and words at the beginning of sentences, and
when you use punctuation at the ends of thoughts (periods, exclamation marks, and question marks).
The Dictation Process
There are several things to consider during the dictated story process.
1. Topics: Topics for dictated stories are generally chosen by your child, although you can offer suggestions to stimulate
ideas. However, your suggestions should relate to your child’s experiences. In order to prompt topics for dictated stories
say something like, “You might like to tell about our pet; things you like to do with your friends; the trip we made to the
park; or tell about one of your favorite toys.” You will likely find that stories are more elaborate, however, when your
child decides on their own topics.
2. Illustrations and Dictation: Having your child draw pictures of experiences prior to telling their story sometimes helps
them focus on their topics; but telling stories first and illustrating after dictation like real authors do, is still another
option.
3. Recording Stories: There are several things to consider when recording your child’s dictation:
• Format for Dictated Stories: Your child may prefer dictating stories on single pieces of paper to attach to paintings and
sculptures, while others enjoy dictating their stories into booklets with stapled covers. Many parents keep a record of
their children’s dictated stories over a period of time by putting their stories into notebooks with several pages.
• Manuscript Print (Small Letters): We recommend using pencils or markers to record dictated stories using lowercase
letters (small letters versus capital letters) and manuscript symbols that are used in commercial print as opposed to
cursive writing that you use to write your own notes and correspondence.
• Speed of Recording: As your child talks, begin printing down what is said as quickly as possible. At first, you may find
that you can’t print as quickly as your child speaks, so ask them to slow down a bit. Eventually, you will find a pace of
recording that matches the speed with which your child talks.
• Record Exact Speech: It’s also important to record exactly what your child says, so avoid changing their language to
something more sophisticated. Remember, this is your child’s story, not yours.
• Prompting Questions: During the dictation session, your child may require prompts when they run out of things to say
about their topics, so ask questions to extend stories to at least five-to-ten sentences. The following questions usually
work well to get children to extend their stories: “So then what happened?” “What happened after that?” “ That sounds
pretty funny, tell more about that part.”
• Spontaneous Dictated Stories: Often, dictated stories are spontaneously motivated by some exciting thing that has just
happened at your house like the birth of a new baby, getting a pet, or going on an excursion.
4. Reading Dictated Stories: Dictated stories are read in a number of different ways:
• Parents Read: Once the dictated story is complete, you read it back to your child while sweeping your index finger
under the text as you go.
• Reading Together: Invite your child to read their dictated story along with you. Fade out when your child reads certain
parts accurately and came back in when they have difficulty.
• Reading Alone: Most children at the Emergent phase are not able to read their personal dictated stories independently
at first. So, only invite your child to read their dictated stories alone when they have begun reading familiar predictable
pattern literature with confidence.
5. Dictated Stories and Oral Language Development: Keeping dictated stories over time provide a developmental record of
your child’s oral language growth. This is especially wise for children who have immature speech.
• Immature Speech: If your child uses immature speech patterns or grammatically inaccurate language in their dictation,
it’s probably best not to read their story back to them. Instead, use these immature dictated stories as a record of their
oral language development over time. Several strategies may improve your child’s oral language. When your child
interacts with other children who speak standard English, their language usually improves over time quite naturally.
Having your child listen to quality literature is another way to expose them to appropriate language structures. So read
a lot of good literature to your child every day. You may think that correcting your child’s immature speech will help
them use more standard forms, but research suggests that over-correcting children’s ‘developing’ speech patterns
frequently leads to regressive growth in oral language development. And this is not what you want. We may want to
consult with the school speech therapist for other suggestions for encouraging your child’s oral language development.
6. After Dictation Activities: Once dictation is complete, invite your child to participate in some of the following activities:
• Have your child illustrate their stories using crayons or markers.
• Have your child retell their dictated story to you or another member of the family. Don’t be surprised when your child
may not be able to recall all the events in their stories.
• Invite your child to dramatize an episode from their dictated story.
7. Frequency of Dictation: Your child will benefit enormously from the dictated story process, so provide opportunities to
dictate stories one or two times a week if you can.
8. Expectations: It is unrealistic to expect your child to be able to read their dictated stories until they reach the Independent
phase of reading.
Once you get comfortable recording your child’s stories, you will be amazed at how well they can tell stories. I hope you
enjoy the process. Contact me if you have any questions.
Sincerely,