How much spell check is too much?

It's harder for the teachers to pick out the top 3 incorrect spellings, than it is for them to underline them all.

It's better for students to have manageable improvements.

And for people asking "how do they learn to spell if you don't correct it"- they learn because the next time different words will be picked to practice. If it gets overlooked in one piece, it will be picked up in another. The teacher picks the words to correct based on past mistakes, how commonly used the word is (either in general or by that particular child) and other factors. They're not just blindly picking a random 3 with no thought on how to progress the child's spelling ability.

Correcting spelling either works or it doesn't, so the quantity is irrelevant. Either it does work, in which case each time the child will now know how to spell those 3 words and can move on to a new 3 each time and steadily improve. Or it doesn't work and they keep repeating their mistakes, so it makes no difference if you correct 3 or 33.

Also, the children aren’t generally stupid. You explain that the policy is to get three spellings to practise, but that it doesn’t necessarily mean they only made three mistakes. They aren’t walking around thinking they’re spelling champs and the only mistakes are the ones pointed out.

It’s totally pointless with a lot of students anyway. Many children with dyslexia for instance could write words out 100 times and not remember them.

The teachers might as well have written “your spelling is shit!” on my work and been done with it.

Our school's policy is that they correct any spelling that a child is expected to know based on their learning so far. Having a set number of corrections is just ridiculous IMO.

At primary level, the content is more important than the spelling, although spelling isn't unimportant of course. We want the children to use ambitious and appropriate vocabulary, not stick only to things they're sure they can spell correctly.

Children see the amount of corrections on a page and internalise that. You could tell them it's prize winning quality, the best you've ever read in your life and they won't believe you because you've corrected seven spellings. And next time they'll play it safe and write something boring and lacking in sparkle but be super proud of that because they didn't get any spelling corrections.

Cross post (different times but it took me ages to write that in between getting ready / breakfast etc 😅) but you've explained it much more succinctly than me!

It really depends on the student. For children who struggle, they might have written every second word wrong and underlining them all and getting them to copy them out is a) disheartening and b) pointless. There's no way they'll remember 23 different spellings just because they copied them out 3 times each. For these children I would pick and choose the words I get them to copy out. If they can't spell simple, common words like 'the' and 'you', then that's what I'll get them to focus on. If they've tried to spell a word like 'indestructible', I'm not going to ask them to write this one out as they will absolutely not remember it next time, plus they're probably not going to be using this word very often. For those who say the child will think that their incorrect spelling is fine, there's a good chance it will be picked up somewhere else down the line, so although it might not be corrected one day, it will be picked up another time.
For stronger spellers/writers, I'll pick out more words and will sometimes get them to check their own spelling using a dictionary, rather than me feed it to them. This tends to be more effective for helping them to remember the spelling as well. I don't think a blanket rule for all children necessarily works that well but I can see why a teacher would ask a TA to do the same thing for all books rather than ask them to do different things for different children based on their abilities, which the TA might not be quite as familiar with.

OP, the teacher is trained in pedagogy like what will make the most effective difference to the students. If you want to know their reasoning then ask. It'll be because it's demoralising and they are more likely to focus on learning the spelling of there are 3 than if there are more. It's also possible that the teacher usually takes a more case by case approach but this is more straightforward to explain to someone else.

I'm not sure you should be expected to work work, fyi. You might want to check with your union.

I actually think this is a really interesting question!

I always assumed that all spellings would be corrected, but not every incorrect spelling would need to be written out by the pupil. I also assumed that this would only be the case for English, with other subjects focussing on more specific subject-related learning.

I do struggle a bit with the idea of just ignoring incorrect spellings in an English lesson, partly because of the message it gives off. I’ve heard more than one pupil say that it doesn’t matter as their teacher doesn’t care. I think good spelling and grammar matters, and it will help our children enormously if they can become as proficient as possible. I think that emphasising the importance of SPAG isn’t a bad thing, but that would mean highlighting all mistakes.

However, I don’t think the child copying out the correct spelling is a useful tactic, especially not when there are multiple corrections.

Both my DC are autistic and my DS wouldn’t write words that he wasn’t absolutely sure of because he was so scared of making a mistake. So I completely understand why having a page full of corrections could be counterproductive for some children but I’m not sure that ignoring incorrect spellings is helpful either?

I don’t really know the answer. Correcting spellings without further comment in one colour pen, and leaving feedback on the actual work in another colour? So no comment on the spellings but praise for the work eg “great use of adjectives Johnny”.

Ideally, teachers would be able to create personalised spelling lists weekly, based on the English work completed. However with a class of 30 and an enormous admin burden, that’s not really feasible.

I discovered that the easiest way to learn vocabulary and spelling was from repeated exposure and simple reading. Eventually it just sticks when you see it time and time again. Correcting spellings exposes the child to the right way to spell the word, but maybe there could be less emphasis on it being wrong? Maybe just a correction without comment, and then focus on the actual content? I don’t know though really, would be interested in other ideas.

You need to follow the school marking, feedback or assessment policy!
They won’t have just arbitrarily decided this for no reason, their own whim or ‘laziness’. It will have been the result of a huge amount of professional discussion and decision making based around the school’s philosophies. Don’t override the teacher as some are suggesting! Speak to someone who can give you some CPD on the school policies. Some might even explain the reasons behind it (if not explained within the policy), but you really do have to follow it even if you don’t like it. There are other schools with different policies. You could look at them next text time you apply for a job. Always on schools’ websites.

It can be soul destroying to have all apwlling errors pointed out.
Plus it stops the child from using more interesting words and makes them stuck to simpler safe words.

Though for high ability y6 who may be writing quite a lot, the 3 word limit seems low.

If there are 20 spelling mistakes in a piece of work, an 8 year old is not going to learn them because their teacher underlined them and asked them to write them out. It's just too much to take in. They are far more likely to remember how to spell new words if they focus on 2/3.

We all went to school. Just because the teachers in the 70s/80s/90s did things differently, doesn't mean it was right and teachers now are lazy. Teaching is driven by research and research shows that copying down x amount of spellings doesn't teach all children how to spell.

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.

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.

Incidentally, I teach a mathematical subject at university and only dock very minimal marks for calculation errors - I'm not testing whether they can accurately type numbers into their calculator under time pressure, I'm testing whether they can problem solve using the techniques I've taught them in the module.

Ask the teacher?

Why don't you ask the teacher you work with OP? Or someone suitable in the school?

Asking here attracts a lot of ignorant opinion (with a couple of well-informed exceptions) which isn't especially helpful, is it?

Also, five different people gleefully leaping to call the teacher 'lazy'. Unsure whether to laugh or cry...

Some children (some people) just 'get' spelling and are able to sight-learn words very quickly. They are lucky. Far more of us need help - and that help is not useful in the form of writing out individual, unconnected words. The teacher probably asked you to "just choose a few" because you don't have the knowledge to know which ones to choose, and she wanted to avoid a pointless and demoralising wall of red pen. If she were doing it herself she might notice that there are repeated errors with one particular spelling rule and she would focus on teaching that one rule which the child can then apply to all the words they will need to spell in future. Next time she'll choose something different.

Lots of huffing and puffing from people who don't seem to understand how people learn on this thread. The end goal is for learning to happen. Learning is not supported by a large amount of negative feedback delivered in one go. Learning IS supported by positive feedback and a manageable amount of next steps and things to improve.

I would not ask again I'd just correct all the spelling mistakes, that's the right and proper thing to do the teacher is lazy.
Also just because she is the teacher it doesn't mean she is always right.

This! Absolutely this. It always did matter.

Aside from the demoralising aspect there is a limit to everyone’s working memory. They are much more likely to embed correct spellings in their long term memory in small chunks. Then when these are embedded they can move on to the next small chunk.

Depends on the work and the child, but for some, a page full of red underlining would be very demoralising and make them either resistant to writing anything or only use 'safe' words they can spell. For some work, having the kids write more freely and use their full range of vocabulary is more important.

Well I am and maybe you could work on accepting that people have different opinions.

Right?! Can't believe this is really true...

Happily, you aren’t in education!