Clarice remember that you can always immediately bail out to a dictation. Yes – CI instruction comes with an inflatable life raft. Just stop what you are doing – PQA , story, reading class, whatever – and do a dictee on whatever it was you were working on. No more drowning feeling! And the kids love it because it is a break from all the CI.
Instructions for how to do dictée/dictado can be found on the resources/workshop handouts link of this site.