Dication for Spelling

I have decided I despise (is that too strong of a word, eh, I don't think so) traditional spelling books. Rote memorization of 20 words or more that don't necessarily follow a set of rules. What I mean by rules is this: cat, sat, mat, hat, that, etc. My oldest child has done okay with traditional spelling. My second child has not done well at all. So, guess what I discovered this past month? After using All About Spelling Levels 1 and 2.

Dictation! Yes, this is what I discovered. Samples can be found here. These are from a book called Spelling Wisdom. I am using the built-in dictation that was found--lo, and behold,--in the back of my curriculum. I started on level 1 with my second child and it is wonderful! My youngest child, age 8, is almost finished with her spelling book and is begging to do the dictation as well.

The last dictation my son did this week was this:

Snow keeps the roots warm.
Nell does not like the snow.
boots

Now, the idea behind this is to be able to write this perfectly without looking! The bold words are for the student to be aware of. They could be new or difficult or tricky. My son looked at this passage while I read it aloud. I then gave him a minute or so to look at it further. We then removed the passage from his sight and I dictated--get it? hence the name--the passage to him one line at a time. I then gave him a short short time to double check everything. Then I gave the passage back to him and he had to check it thoroughly. Capital letters matter. Periods matter. And, obviously, spelling matters. He did miss the word "Nell". He spelled it "Nel" and he also put a capital "B" on "boots".  I think these were just careless mistakes but sorry! The step now was he had to circle the mistakes on the original passage in my book. The next day, I gave him the passage to look over as I read just as the first day. This time he paid special attention to the things he missed because they were circled. Then we followed the steps just as before. Guess what? This time he didn't miss anything! If he would have missed something, he would have circled it and we would have repeated the SAME passage the next day. If everything is correct, we can move to the next passage.

What I like about it is the grammar instruction that is happening also. And the listening skills. And he is correcting everything which is a plus. The passages increase in skill level slowly and gently until they are eventually writing passages that are quite long.

Have you ever used dictation? I'd love to hear about it!