How much spell check is too much?

More so than, I think, any other profession, people have strong opinions on how teachers should be teaching. Teacher's don't just pitch up in classroom and get going. They are trained and engage in constant CPD. That training is based on real evidence of what works. You can access it if you wish. Education Endowment Foundation is a starting point.

Teaching over a year is highly structured and iterative. It's not randomly chucking information at kids and seeing what sticks. There is more monitoring in schools on how children are developing their skills and abilities than ever before. Teachers are focussed on the learning outcomes of each individual session and the development of each pupil. Just because something isn't addressed today, doesn't mean it won't be addressed next week or when it is age and milestone appropriate to do so.

Not at all.
We explain why we don't mark every single one wrong. It would be overwhelming and not motivating to get a page of red.

It's done for the reasons already explained.

People, and kids, are not good at trying to learn multiple new concepts at the same time.

So, to teach spelling, the children will have dedicated spelling tests.

To learn how to write, the emphasis is on writing, and not spelling - although has already been stated some mistakes will be pointed out to remind the children that they do need to think about spelling as well, but it's far more important and productive to shift the emphasis on how to write well - using good descriptions, engaging language etc, and if a few words are misspelt, so what?

And, really, when was the last time you actually wrote ANYTHING without having a computer spell check for you?

If you are a teacher who does not correct chocklit then, when the child discovers the correct spelling a week later, they will deduce that you, the teacher, are ignorant. Not good.

I'm frankly astonished that this is deemed acceptable. However it shouldn't surprise me. I remember someone asking me to read her essay for a university course and I was appalled at her spelling. She wasn't dyslexic.

Now I understand that children's spelling is not being corrected lest it demoralise them.

Exactly and it will be more damaging when a few weeks later they're still making the same spelling mistake and wondering why it's been 'right' for weeks and is now being marked as wrong. Surely that would make them question what else is wrong that they've not been told about?

This reminds me of the first parents' evening my mom attended in the UK - her and the teacher were not ready for each other 🤣🤣.

Three has been the guideline for at least 20 years, as that's what my mom was told then. Anything more than that apparently damages a child's self-esteem.

I'd think terrible spelling is worse, but 🤷🏾‍♀️.

If a primary school aged child is given ten calculations to do, then the calculations are the point of the work and any mistakes will be corrected.

But surely that's demoralising? If children have loads of corrections through their work, they may lose confidence.

If a child is given a piece of writing then the focus could be creative writing, story structure, recall of science or history facts from the lesson etc etc etc. It's very unlikely that spelling is the focus. If every single incorrect spelling is marked, including words they can't be expected to know yet, then on the corrected piece of work it will look like spelling was the focus and it will dominate all the other work the child was doing which is counterproductive.

Children's mistakes should be corrected so that they can learn. If they don't know that they're spelling something wrong, they can't learn the correct spelling.

This to me is unadulterated dumbing down of a child's education.

I have 2 children who are very bright, rank above average etc. However their spelling is appalling and when we go to see the books at school I often notice things that haven't been corrected. I work in a role where attention to detail especially with spelling is vital. I can understand we don't want to dishearten kids but this method is not working.

Precisely this.

Teaching spelling and how to write are not the same thing at all.

Our school sends spelling lists home with the kids every week, and of course these should be entirely correct.

When a kid is learning how to write though - how to present ideas and concepts through written language, the focus is not on whether every word is spelt correctly. It's important that the child does know that they are making mistakes, but the focus is not on the spelling and so pointing out every single issue is completely counter-productive to what is actually being taught.

I'm amazed to hear that teachers correct any spelling errors nowadays, given the dreadfully low standard of written English I see every day, not just on SM etc but in books, newspapers and so on, where it is someone's paid job.

Quite. The thinking on this has moved on since most posters were at school. People seem to assume that persistent and thorough correction cures inaccurate spelling, but it simply doesn't. A piece of work that's a sea of little corrections just washes over kids. I teach languages at secondary school and do generally correct all mistakes, out of habit really. But I can correct and re-correct the same mistakes over and over again and they still get the same ones wrong!

It is completely counterproductive to only correct some of the spellings; this implies that the others must be correct, even if they’re not. Spelling and grammar is are things on which I was raised strictly on and something I am strict about with my own ^ missing word?. I would be very unhappy to hear the teacher was being “soft” on this, *Comma splice. Use a full stop and start a new sentence *I certainly am not.

Well done, Emerald 88. A good try!

WWW: You've worked very hard to show you can use a semi-colon and have tried out some advanced word choices to give your opinion.

EBI: You need to take much more care forming sentences and using basic punctuation accurately.

I worked in a similar profession, and I was much less tolerant of slips in the workplace for the reasons you say. Likewise, if I was assessing something in a project rather than an exam I'd be penalising calculation errors more harshly as there is scope to check them.

However, in an exam I might be checking that they can use a method that takes a couple of pages of algebra and calculus to work through. Most of the marks will go for the actual method, and then a fair chunk for the calculus. The typing of the numbers into the calculator will only get a tiny fraction because it's not what I'm testing.

Likewise, it's not realistic to expect primary aged DC to pay equal attention to all aspects of their writing every time. So if they're writing a short story based on life in medieval times (sorry, no idea what older primary aged DC do in school!), the teacher will be interested in the story structure and whether they have accurately taken the historical info taught in the lessons and used it in the story. That's all much higher order skill stuff than spelling. Which yes, is important, but the teacher doesn't want them getting fixated on the spellings and losing all the other good stuff that's actually harder to do. If every piece of work they get back is covered in spelling corrections, they get the message that spelling counts above all and then that's what they'll focus on.

People calling this lazy don't understand how to teach writing. It's far more complex than what the average person can notice by skimming through.

Saying ALL errors must be corrected is ridiculous. Unless a child can produce a perfect piece of writing (for purpose and audience, with interesting reasons arguments and ideas, accurate and sophisticated sentence structures and paragraphing, aptly chosen devices, precise vocabulary, a whole range of punctuation and clear agreement, before even thinking about spelling), they're always going to have things to work on. But acting on a few at a time makes far more sense than just telling them it's all wrong.

This is interesting because I was going to say the opposite. I’m an accountant in a training firm and by far the most common errors our juniors make are “silly mistakes” - basic calculations, transposition errors, and yes, spelling errors. Contrary to most of this thread, this is actually a big deal and costs our clients money, and ultimately can lead to the juniors failing their exams and getting booted off the graduate scheme. So I really feel there is an element of this kind of “oh it doesn’t matter” attitude preparing them very poorly for the world of work.

I do understand the motivation point - why not have incorrectly spelled words written correctly at the back of the book / on a separate piece of paper to be practiced later? On the actual work they could be underlined, just like an online spell check.

I am not 'teacher bashing' if that's what you think.The reason for my thinking this is constantly reading on MN and hearing from teacher friends in real life about the insane workload expectations of teachers. I don't think teachers are incapable of monitoring and progressing individual pupils learning, but I believe their workload is such that it's impossible to give this the time and attention required while achieving the myriad of other tasks expected of them. I wonder if what the OP was told is symptomatic of that, and if it's a genuine marking policy, is it used as intended?
My worry is that some average students may never realise their potential because they will make some progress, and that's enough 'proof' for the school that targets are being met.

This is a strategy used specifically for students with spld as they would sometimes have a full page of corrections which may demotivate them.

It's quite annoying as a parent to see these not picked up, those spelling errors become habits and are quite difficult to correct later on. Try to explain to your child that their spelling us glaringly incorrect (and this comes from someone with English as a second language) when teachers ignored it? It makes any text look sloppy, regardless of the content.

Yes, I think highly able children can be pushed to be more careful with spelling.

For the less able, I'd just want them to feel uninhibited about writing and as you say, just to focus on 2 or 3 spellings.

(But...while you're at it...please could you drill into them all to put a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence and a full stop at the end? With the secondary students I used to teach, some still failed to do this even in Y12 and 13! I get that many children will never really grasp the grammatical requirements of a sentence (finite verb etc) but they could just top and tail it with these markers!)

Well if that’s true then the school or teacher are not doing things properly and should be training their TAs better. Either that or it’s possible OP was so focused on thinking “this policy is stupid” that she didn’t listen to or understand the actual training she was given.

@Coolblur why don't your believe that teachers are capable of remembering (or going back and looking at!) their pupil's past work to decide what to work on with them this time? It's literally our job and the number one thing any teacher is assessed on- progress for individual children! You're essentially saying we're "too busy" to do our marking correctly (as thinking about previous work is a part of the marking process).

At my children’s school they correct what has been taught already, but they don’t correct attempts at words that they have heard and never seen -- you don’t want to put them off trying.
The teachers have a degree in this stuff and I would suggest trusting them a little more.
I don’t believe that they marked all errors in the past either. It’s just that when we were children, we couldn’t see all the other uncorrected errors. Now we can.
Bear in mind that the many people who don’t know the difference between there and their and post a chester draws for sale went to school in this mythical past when all errors were corrected -- either they weren’t all corrected, or they were but this doesn’t work.

You say they're not just blindly picking which spellings to correct, but OPs post seems to indicate that's exactly what she's been asked to do. Or at least, she doesn't mention any particular methodology the teacher has told her to follow, only that she should correct 3.

I'm really surprised at the way spelling is apparently not taught.
I think tailoring learning to the child is a good idea, but I don't for one second believe that teachers will remember what each individual child focused on spelling correctly last week in their work and what words they need to focus on the following week. As many have pointed out, they are very busy.
I think those who are very able will be fine, and those who really struggle will be supported, but it's those in the middle who may slip through the cracks. They could be better at spelling and literacy if they were properly supported to improve on their learning, but instead, they won't be as good as they could be because of the selective marking methods used.
Those pointing out that it doesn't matter in primary school, at what point does it matter, and when will children be taught?