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Let me say, first of all, that I don't put just a whole lot of stock in achievement testing as THE indicator of a student's success (or lack of). However......

My dd12, now entering 7th grade took the SAT (Stanford Achievement Test) this year. The last one she took was at the end of her 4th grade year.

In grades 1-3 she did Spelling Power. For 4th grade she did All About Spelling. With both programs, we had basically the same results. She would do great for the actual spelling lessons and tests. She was an average speller---neither fantastic nor awful. But she often misspelled words that she had previously had on tests.
End of 4th grade she scored 53 percentile on the Spelling part of the SAT.

She started HOD in 5th grade (Preparing). She had just completed 6th grade (CtC) when she took the SAT. We have done no other spelling besides dictation. I knew that her "non spelling class" spelling had improved on her written narrations, etc, but didn't know how she would do on the spelling on the achievement test. Well, we got her scores this week and she scored 99 percentile in spelling!!

She did well in all areas, but spelling was the most dramatic improvement. I know dictation as spelling instruction is sort of "out of the box" thinking for some of us, so I thought I'd share our (very positive) experience!

Angie

What a great story!! Thank you so much for sharing!

Wow that's fantastic! I had no idea dictation was that effective (we're not to spelling yet...)

Congrats! That's so encouraging! Thank you for sharing your experience!!!

Amazing! I'm hoping to see similar results with my non-natural speller. Within our first two weeks she is doing her capitalization and punctuating properly. Between dictation and R&S she's finally got it!

I love stories like this.

That is so encouraging! For those of us that struggled to give up spelling for only dictation, hearing how successful it can be reassures us that we are on the right path after all. Thank You.

Thanks for the information. Congratulations! We are "going out on a limb" and trying dictation this year, so your report was encouraging.

We had our first day of Preparing today. My 10 y/o daughter was proud to show Daddy her dictation.

Daddy is a teacher in public school. This is his 20th year.

She explained how she studied the words, commas, capitals, indentations. She said she had to read it out loud to herself several times to "hear" where the commas and periods went. She explained that she had always thought it was "habbit" not "habit" because it rhymes with "rabbit". And that she had remembered everything and got it correct during dictation. She was so proud.

My husband's comment? "I WISH we had a way to study spelling like this at school. To look at indentation and punctuation and spelling EVERY DAY has got to be a great way to really get it inside their heads! And...it's got to be better than continually showing them paragraphs with incorrect spellings in the spelling book and asking them to find, look at, and fix the misspellings. WHY would I want them to KEEP SEEING IT WRONG?"

-Rebecca

Woohoo! Love hearing those success stories!

Thanks for the encouragement! I have been trying to make a decision between spelling words and dictation, so this really helped. We will be doing dictation since reading these posts.

I'm glad I ended up posting this, since you've found it helpful. And thanks, Rebecca for posting about your dd and dh's conversations also. Sometimes when we come across "real" teachers---and especially when they find out we homeschool (gasp!)---we tend to feel sort of sub-par or as if we have done something wrong. Hearing (or in this case, reading) comments like his are re-assuring!
Angie

WOW - way to go dd, and hooray for dictation! My ds's spelling scores have gradually improved over the years thanks to dictation as well. The jump from his initial scores to now (five years later) has been substantial! He went from being very average to being very above average. What's even better - his spelling in his writing has improved SO much! I agree. Dictation is thinking out of the box, but it sure has been great to leap out of the box and enjoy the results.

In Christ,
Julie

off2workigo wrote:...it's got to be better than continually showing them paragraphs with incorrect spellings in the spelling book and asking them to find, look at, and fix the misspellings. WHY would I want them to KEEP SEEING IT WRONG?"

-Rebecca

This is EXACTLY what I said when I discovered dictation. Seven years of teaching in ps doing spelling programs that continually showed dc incorrect spellings - goodness - "frend" (instead of "friend") started looking right to me too! Spelling programs that have dc find the misspelled words, show them mixed up letters to put into correct spellings, or have them reading spelling words in "sentences" with missing/wrong punctuation - who could be surprised when dc misspell words, mix up the order of the letters, and write sentences without punctuation?!? Dictation was a light bulb moment for me. Blessedly, it turns out it was for my ds too. Thanks for sharing this, Rebecca!

In Christ,
Julie

I love dictation! I am from Brazil and studied there from preschool through high school and we always did dictation. In fact the traditional "spelling" for me was very foreign. So I'm glad I can use dictation with Hod!