What is DOL?

Haha!  That’s an excellent question!

DOL stands for Daily Oral Language.  Basically, the students copy and correct two sentences with errors every day.  After a few minutes of working on this on their own, we discuss the proper corrections, hence the “oral” part of the name.  This is the time to reinforce what students should have learned in all of that mechanics instruction in K-7!  We have good discussions about WHY things are this way in English, and then we move on.  It should be a fairly quick activity, but the daily repetition helps a lot.  I don’t do a lot of direct skills instruction because so many of the kids need radically different help in a variety of different areas.  (To individualize my instruction for each child, I am dependent upon them doing their writing projects, which I read with an eye towards determining their specific strengths and weaknesses in the area of conventions.  I also prepare mini-lessons for the classes, based on what I perceive being problem areas for a large number of students in a particular class.)

The thing about DOL is that by the end of the week, students should have ten sentences with all of the errors corrected using proper editing marks.  I do check for mistakes, and I do end up with scores that are not A plusses.  Yet, we have discussed all of the right answers and demonstrated them on the board, so how can a student not get an A?  Perhaps he/she was absent and didn’t make up the sentences.  Perhaps he/she copied the sentences but didn’t mark the corrections on the paper.  Sometimes students forget their names on their papers and end up with zero scores.  There are several other possibilities, but if your son or daughter’s DOL grades are troubling you, let me know, and I can help figure out what’s going on!  It’s my job!  🙂


8 responses to “What is DOL?

  1. Jessica Taylor Traub

    Comment!!!! 😀

  2. Camden B. Mauchley

    Did we have any D.O.L on Friday the 9 or Monday the 12??

  3. Michael Oliver

    DOL is love, DOL is life.

  4. Michael Oliver

    DOL is my favorite in this class. its what keeps me going threw the day. I feel sad without it.

  5. Alivia Antinetti

    hi, I’m glad all this information is online

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