✍️ How to prepare for a dictation: the 4-step method, from CP to CM2

Friday morning: dictation. Wednesday evening, the word list is still buried at the bottom of the school bag. Thursday, 8:30 pm: we read the words out loud once, cross our fingers, and on Friday discover eight mistakes across twelve lines.

It's not about memory. It's about method—and above all, spreading out the work. Dictation should be prepared in four ten-minute sessions over the week, not crammed into one thirty-minute session the night before. Here’s how to do it, step by step, from CP to CM2.

Prepared or unprepared dictation: what difference does it make for your child?

A prepared dictation means your child knows the text, or at least the words, in advance. The aim isn’t to catch them out: it’s to help them write words they’ve practised correctly. This is different from an unprepared dictation, where the text is revealed on the day.

Between these two, teachers use several formats you’ll see in the exercise book:

• Word dictation: a list, often linked to a sound or a rule for the week.
• Gap-fill dictation: the text is given, only the tricky words need to be filled in.
• Self-dictation: the child learns a short text by heart, then writes it out alone.
• Negotiated dictation: pupils compare their versions and discuss before correcting. This is done in class, not at home.

Whatever the format, what you practise at home is always the same: the tricky words and the agreements.

How to prepare for a dictation: the 4-step method

Four short sessions, spread over four evenings. Each one takes ten minutes. It’s the spacing that helps spelling stick, not the length of time.

1. Step 1 — read and understand. Your child reads the text out loud. Make sure they understand every word: a word they don’t know is twice as hard to spell. Explain, rephrase, but don’t dictate anything that evening.
2. Step 2 — spot the tricky parts. With pencil in hand, your child underlines what might cause problems: long words, silent letters, agreements, homophones. They do the underlining: spotting a trap is already half the battle.
3. Step 3 — copy the tricky words. Three to six words at most: write them, cover them, write them again from memory. Spelling aloud doesn’t help much: it’s the hand that needs to remember.
4. Step 4 — the practice dictation. The night before, you dictate the text (or a few sentences) just like in class. Correct together, and any missed words go back through step 3.

If you only have two evenings, keep steps 2 and 4: spot the tricky parts, then practise under real conditions. These two make the biggest difference.

Prepared dictation by level: CP, CE1, CE2, CM1, CM2

These are just guidelines—not official standards. The only reference that matters is what your child’s teacher does. They’re here to give you an idea of what’s typical, and to avoid expecting from a CE1 what you’d ask of a CM2.

A prepared dictation for CE1 and a prepared dictation for CM2 are not tackled in the same way. In CP and CE1, you focus on words. For a prepared dictation in CE2 or CM1, it’s a different story: the word is often familiar, but the ending is where mistakes happen. From CE2 onwards, the main focus is on agreements.

Choose the text and spot the real pitfalls

If the teacher provides the text, that’s sorted: you work with that one, not another. If you need to pick a dictation text yourself — during the holidays, for example — choose a passage from a book your child is already reading, and trim it to the right length using the table above.

In almost every primary dictation, mistakes cluster around four main areas:

• Homophones: a / à, et / est, son / sont, ces / ses. You can tell them apart using replacement tricks, explained in our article on mnemonics for homophones.
• Invariable words: toujours, beaucoup, parmi… These can’t be worked out, they just have to be learned — see our method for learning invariable words.
• Agreements: subject-verb, noun-adjective, and past participle from CM1 onwards.
• Silent letters: the d in grand, the t in petit. The lifesaver: look for a word from the same family (grande, petite).

These rules come up in dictation after dictation, year after year. That’s exactly why we’ve condensed them into short cards in the Kidibook memory tricks: one tip per rule, to reread in thirty seconds before starting.

Correcting without discouraging

This is the moment that makes or breaks the next dictation. If a child links dictation with a page full of red marks and sighs, they’ll switch off for good.

Three principles are enough:

• Correct together, never behind their back. A page returned all crossed out teaches nothing; an error found together is remembered.
• Count the correct words, not just the mistakes. “Thirty-eight out of forty-two words right” means the same as “four mistakes”, but gets a very different reaction.
• Don’t correct everything. Working on two recurring mistakes is better than flagging twelve. Focus on the ones that keep coming up.

And give your child a proofreading checklist, always the same one, to use before handing in: capitals and full stops? verb agreements? plurals? homophones? words learned that week? Five questions, in this order, every time. Proofreading without a checklist is pointless: children reread what they think they wrote.

How to prepare a dictation at home, even during the holidays

Four ten-minute sessions add up to forty minutes over a whole week. That’s less than one stressful evening the night before — but only if those ten minutes really happen.

What works:

• The same slot every evening, short and announced in advance. The timer ends the session instead of the parent: that’s the idea behind the Pomodoro method for children.
• Breakfast time for the words in session 3: five words on the whiteboard while the milk heats up, and you’re done.
• Wednesday for session 1, if evenings are too busy during the week.

During the holidays, one five-word dictation a week is plenty to keep things ticking over. The aim isn’t to get ahead: it’s to make sure the new term doesn’t start from scratch.