Dictogloss or total gapfill?
As I was writing yesterday’s post, I realised that I do something like a dictogloss with my Young Learners, but I’d just never realised that’s what I was doing! At school, we use the Bugs series of books by Macmillan and they have some really fun songs in them, though I sometimes want to do more with the song than just ask students to sing it. So, without opening their books, I play the song and ask them to write down all the words they hear. Then I put the song on the board with spaces where the words should be and students take it in turns to say words they heard. I write them on in the correct space and then, when students have run out of words, I play the song again and ask them to write down any words they’re missing. At this point, they’re able to follow the song on the board and so they are more focused on specific words.
Great idea! We have those same books, sending this on to other teachers 🙂
I’d also recommend the song dictation I blogged about – students really enjoyed it and it was a wonderful activity to get more out of the song 🙂
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