Mumkins,
I'll just pop-in to mention that I know exactly how you feel, as I felt the same way! Here's a link to a past thread where several ladies, along with me, share their results a year (or more) after making the switch.
Link:
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1246
Now that my oldest son will be a 9th grader and my second son will be a 6th grader, I can honestly tell you that I couldn't be more thrilled with dictation. My kiddos continue to be excellent spellers in their daily written work, even though they couldn't be more opposite in personalities and learning styles!
Dictation has blessed our family in its simplicity by being something we are steadily able to complete each day. Yet, it is much meatier than a formal spelling program, as it yields long-term results in the habits of capitalization, punctuation, usage, grammar, and even in modeling good writing. Plus, these habits transfer to daily written work, making dictation go far beyond learning basic spelling rules!
Another thing that I noticed after reading more about CM and studied dictation is her continual focus on NOT seeing words written incorrectly, as then the incorrect image of the word becomes imprinted on the mind (causing the "wrong" spelling to now "look" right)!
This made total sense to me, as in my 11 years as a public school teacher I'd watched countless kiddos struggle with poor spelling who had no clue whether a word was spelled correctly or not. They had honestly seen the word written incorrectly so many times that their mind couldn't recognize the correct spelling even when they tried!
After processing through this thinking a bit, I was amazed to notice how many American spelling programs have a section within their spelling pages that requires a child to find the misspelled word within a provided passage! When thinking along the lines of CM's thinking, this type of exercise is a terrible idea as it actually gives the mind yet another opportunity to take a mental picture of an incorrectly spelled word!
The theory for including this within a spelling program is that it is good practice for standardized tests where kiddos will be asked to find the incorrectly spelled word. But in truth, it is training the child to focus on the misspelled word rather than on the correctly spelled words! Anyway, with our own boys we've found that they have no trouble finding the incorrectly spelled words on the standardized tests. They are so used to seeing the words spelled correctly that the incorrect ones truly jump off the page... no practice needed! This is probably more than you wanted to know, but I know this type of thinking was a dawning to me. So, I just thought I'd share!
Blessings,
Carrie