The whole secret of spelling lies in the habit of visualising words from memory, and children must be trained to visualise in the course of their reading. They enjoy this way of learning to spell." --Charlotte Mason, Volume 1, pp 243
Spelling does not come naturally to Mae, as it does to Viola, and as we are preparing for the step up to Year 4 next fall I committed to devouring all I could in CM's works, on the AO forums, and among trusted CM bloggers, the hows and whys of spelling. I was seeking an ah-ha moment. I found it.
The first thing I've done is taken a step back from dictation in order to polish our approach to copywork so that it more closely resembles Charlotte Mason's principles of careful study of each word, in whole not part, in the mind's eye of the child--taking a mental picture of the word to imprint it on the brain to effortlessly (eventually) recall it every single time. Well, that is what we are striving for ... slow and steady.
The Rationale of Spelling.––But the fact is, the gift of spelling depends upon the power the eye possesses to 'take' (in a photographic sense) a detailed picture of a word; and this is a power and habit which must be cultivated in children from the first. When they have read 'cat,' they must be encouraged to see the word with their eyes shut, and the same habit will enable them to image 'Thermopylae.' This picturing of words upon the retina appears to be to be the only royal road to spelling; an error once made and corrected leads to fearful doubt for the rest of one's life, as to which was the wrong way and which is the right. Most of us are haunted by some doubt as to whether 'balance,' for instance, should have one 'l' or two; and the doubt is born of a correction. Once the eye sees a misspelt word, that image remains; and if there is also the image of the word rightly spelt, we are perplexed as to which is which. Now we see why there could not be a more ingenious way of making bad spellers than 'dictation' as it is commonly taught. Every misspelt word is in image in the child's brain not to be obliterated by the right spelling. It becomes, therefore, the teacher's business to prevent false spelling, and, if an error has been made, to hide it away, as it were, so that the impression may not become fixed. {pp 241}
NB~A couple things I have revised since the above picture ... I now use a black dry-erase marker and after we study and work on the passage, I make certain that the board is clean and uncluttered so that all she sees are the black words on the white board, making it easier, I hope, to take the clearest picture in her mind's eye.