The Mother Tongue, Book I: Lessons in Speaking, Reading and Writing English · Secs. 134–137 · Part 1: Part First
39. The Ant and the Grasshopper: writing a conversation
Goal: Your child writes a conversation from dictation with quotation marks, capitals and commas in the right places.
You'll need
- The book, open to this lesson
- Paper and pencil (a notebook kept just for this book works well)
What's in the book
Section 134 is the fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper, told almost all in conversation. Section 135 explains three things about how its quotations are written. Section 136 is dictation of the conversation; Section 137 asks the child to copy it without punctuation and then put the marks back.
The lesson, step by step
Read the fable as a play
Read the fable together, your child as the grasshopper, you as the ant (take turns with the narrator lines).
"Then you must dance all winter," said the ant.
Then your child tells the fable without the book.
Three things to notice (Section 135)
Read Section 135 together and find an example of each:
1. Every quotation begins with a capital.
2. Every quotation is inside quotation marks.
3. Every quotation is separated from the rest of the sentence by a mark, usually a comma, or a question mark when it is a question.
Study before dictation
The book says: study the fable until you can write every sentence correctly from dictation. Give your child five minutes to look closely at where every mark goes.
Dictation (Section 136)
Close the book. Read the conversation aloud slowly, one sentence at a time, saying each sentence twice. Your child writes it. Six to eight lines is plenty for one day.
Check it gently
Open the book. Your child compares their writing with the book, line by line, and marks their own mistakes with a light pencil check. Then they fix them. Choose just one kind of mark to talk about (for example, the comma before "said the ant").
Try it the other way (Section 137)
If there is time: you write two lines of the fable with no marks at all, and your child puts all the marks back in.
What a good result looks like
Example (written for this guide, not from the book):
A good dictation page has a new line for each speaker, a capital at the start of each quotation, both quotation marks, and a comma or question mark before "said" or "asked". A sentence of your child's own in the same pattern:
"Is it cold outside?" asked my sister.
"Very cold," answered Dad.
Afterwards
Repeat the dictation another day with different lines until it comes out nearly perfect.
Tip
In dictation, let the child see their own mistakes by comparing with the book. That fixes them better than your red pencil.