[Bilingualdiva]

Howdy..
I like the idea of having students read to other students and dictate. I use a different exercise where I give a colored pen (orange) to the kids and I read to them various things(depending on what we are working on, must of the time I teach with thematic units) poetry, school newspaper article, ads, song lyrics... what ever works, the students take dictation, then I change the color of the pens (green) and I read again the same thing, kids can not change what they have written because they are using a different colored pencil... the idea is to get them to use only one color on their papers....meaning they have understood..Eventually I stop reading and they start taking my place... I already have them broken up into groups of 5 or 6; each week they take turns being the "teacher"..
when I started doing this I realized that what ever I wanted to them to read had to be read outloud in class the day before or before the excercise....it's pretty cool.... make sure you tell the "teacher" student that their objective is to get everyone to write it all in one color...at the end of the week or month I tally those teams that did the best and take their pictures and post them in the room as "DICTATORS" of the week...they get a kick out of it..