And here Alison writes about 'dictation':
http://www.spelfabet.com.au/2013/02/dic ... -dictator/
Now very interestingly, and importantly, the revised national curriculum for English (in England) actually included 'dictation' in its statutory requirements!
This is what it states:
''give pupils opportunities to apply and practise their spelling'' (NC 2014 KS1)
[KS1 refers to 'Key Stage One' which is the five to seven year olds.]
Do ensure that children in KS1 routinely write simple dictated sentences that consist of words with the spellings taught so far.
I like to promote an activity which I describe as 'self-dictation'. This gives individual children complete autonomy to work at their own pace. With a piece of cumulative, decodable 'plain' text (that is, text that matches the alphabetic code taught to date - and it has no pictures), the learner at first has to read the text, then can re-read, sentence by sentence, hold each sentence in memory to write it in a lined exercise book. Thus, quicker learners can do far more than slower learners - and therefore the activity is automatically differentiated. This can be followed by the learners illustrating the text based on their comprehension of the text. Of course 'discussion' about the text can take place with the teacher and other learners as well.
Susan Godsland reminded me of Alison's great posts on creative writing and dictations above, and she also wrote this to me about Professor Diane McGuinness's work:
One more thought, dictation helps to avoid children writing & viewing illegal English spellings. Evidence is that writing/viewing illegal spellings is detrimental to learning how to spell.
'(L)ooking at mis-spelled words increases spelling errors over the short and long terms...The visual system of the brain automatically codes what it sees. It doesn't adjudicate between 'right' and 'wrong' (D.McGuinness GRB p260) (D.McGuinness ERI p117-121) Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
My worry about the use of 'illegal spellings' in providing children with nonsense or pseudo words to practise their blending skill, is that children are invariably presented with spelling patterns that we don't normally find in English words. Common sense would suggest that this is not really a good idea as spelling accurately is such a challenging and fragile state of affairs.
I promote phonics provision which I call 'two-pronged systematic and incidental phonics teaching' precisely to avoid or diminish children being stuck on only one spelling alternative for the sounds when they write or read more widely - beyond the structured phonics lessons. This approach is supported by a permanently visible, overarching 'Alphabetic Code Chart' so that teachers can refer to 'spelling alternatives' from the outset of their planned systematic synthetic phonics programme. Otherwise, children may spend a whole year on entirely invented, or plausible, spelling and writing - with no-one drawing their attention to the need for learning about accurate spellings.
Susan also said this:
I'd also say that it's important for beginning readers to write (spell) by hand according to research and dictation (using spellings already taught) is a scaffolded approach & easier than independent writing for beginners.