As I said in my post on Copywork andDictation Part 1: Teaching Mechanics, I love copywork as a tool for gently
teaching all kinds of things, from grammar and mechanics to literary styles and
that ineffable quality of “voice.” You can make a whole language arts course out of
copywork and dictation if you want to. So,
in this post I want to focus more on literary elements, although my example
below includes some mechanics I mentioned as well.
You can teach literary styles just like
you can mechanics. I really think it just depends on what you make of it, and
how you plan it out. One year I focused
on copywork/dictation as our main language arts. Here's a copy of a Sonlight post I wrote that
year about The Journeyman—how I chose
passages and how I taught them:
First, here are some things that I look
for in a dictation passage: Did I go "wow" when I read it? Did it
strike me as powerful, poignant, a beautiful description? Did it have a great
message? Is it good advice? If it's good to read, it's good to study and
emulate. A passage I didn't get around to using, but has great description, is
the sunrise on the top of p. 37. The two I did use, I'll post below.
The 2nd I absolutely love for it's
beauty and it's power. The first I chose because I thought the message was
worthwhile, and in many ways, what summed up Mr. Toppan's teaching also sums up
mine.
"Will it always be beautiful, Mr.
Toppan?"
"Yes," he answered with
conviction, "if you keep true to your own feeling for beauty."
"What do you mean by keeping
true?"
Mr. Toppan looked at him until his eyes
seemed not to see the boy Jared, but the man Jared might become. "It's
letting God have your life, so that your hands do the work He wants you to do.
You've begun rightly, Jared, for that's the beginning and end of all my
teaching."
Notes: I had my kids do this passage
over 2 days (btw, from p. 31). I split it where the line break is. I edited
some phrases out and the attributions to make it shorter. It's clear from
context who's saying what, and I wanted to get to the heart of the passage
without wearing out my children. We discussed what it meant when Mr. Toppan
looked at Jared and the kids acted out that kind of expression. We talked about
what the message meant too.
We discussed the use of capitals (names, titles),
abbreviations (Mr.) and commas in quotes (lots of practice here). We had been
discussing commas in quotations and for phrasing, and this selection added a
third usage—around the name of someone we speak to. (There's not one after Mr.
Toppan because it's the end of the sentence, but there is one before, and then
below there are commas before and after Jared's name when he's addressed.)
I don't go looking for passages that
teach certain concepts necessarily—I look for powerful writing and then I ask
my kids what they notice, then I point out what I notice, we look at literary
elements, then we look at the physical aspects of writing. It gets easier as
you get in the mindset of pre-teaching.
The 2nd passage we used: "It was a
night for the stars to bless with light—for Eliza, who through the travail of
her body had given a child to the world, and for Jared, who through the travail
of his soul was giving a man to the world" (p. 98).
This passage might not display its full
power until you read it in context, but when you do, wow. When I asked my kids
what they noticed, my son noticed the parallel clauses right away—the two
travails etc... We talked about why this was a powerful metaphor and what Jared
was going through. We talked about em dashes and commas around clauses. This
one would have been possible to also do from dictation (sometimes I put names
or harder words up on a white board).
Sometimes I point out spelling patterns we are working on. For example, you could point out the igh in night & light. Or that the wor in world is a pattern when "or" stands for the /er/ sound. The ai in travail. How to turn "give" into "given." I wouldn't necessarily go over all of these, just pick a few to focus on so it won't be overwhelming.
I asked if there were any rhyming
words, and my daughter found those.
Things like rhyme and meter sometimes show up in prose and add to the
beauty of the language, so it can be fun to look for these in addition to
alliteration and other such devices.
By the way, this would be a great book to
discuss foreshadowing! I don't want to post a spoiler, but I'll just say if
you're looking for it, you can guess much of what will happen. This is a book
to relax into and enjoy the beautiful language and the unfolding of the story
line. There are lots of other passages one could choose for copywork, I
remember almost every chapter having choices, you can't really go wrong in this
book. Oh, here's another one: "The moon threw a silver cloak across his
shoulders and before it was withdrawn, he was asleep" (p. 44). For that
one, you could discuss how personification and imagery are used.
If you can’t think of anything great to
discuss, that’s ok. It’s fine to just enjoy some passages, or to ask, “what do
you like about this sentence?” and then tell your child what you like. It's also fine to let your child choose something he or she would like to copy. Good literature is meant first and foremost
to be enjoyed.
Copywork and dictation used in this way
can be foundational to your language arts, or they can just be a fun extra to
do as a break from your everyday language arts program. Use it all the time,
or save it for just those times when you are inspired. Most of all, have fun
with it!
