When the teachers get it wrong...

[AudTheDeepAndCrispAndEven]

What do you do? I'm not talking the odd typo but getting facts wrong. This week my kids have been told that a rhombus has no lines of symmetry, had arithmetic tests with incorrect answers (a weekly occurence) and this morning that there are three types of formal conjunction 'and, but and CASUAL' (this last should be causal). The teacher pronounces it 'casual' through the lesson too, so it's not just a typo. I private messaged her to let her know in a friendly way and have had rather a snotty reply. I know they are overworked and under appreciated blah blah but surely they should be checking what they are doing? I wouldn't get away with constant errors in my profession.

@toocold54 the lessons are set by a number of different teachers, so the errors cannot be laid at the feet of one teacher (phew). The 'gray' was used in an Oak Academy Lesson, but don't get me started on them!

practice instead of practise

I believe if you are in England then both spellings are used depending on the sentence. If you are American it is only practice.

Or should that be 'those'?

It could be worse my daughter stuck her hand up in class the teacher ignored her so she shouted out sir you have mismarked me! He thought he should call her out on it so she gave an accurate history lesson correcting all his mistakes (dates places etc) she was bang on in everything she said and a wee bit scathing (according to him) over how he could have got his facts so wrong this was infromt of the entire class I got a phone call later complaining about her I told him she has been obsessed with the tudors since she was five years old she knows every inch of his family tree I guarantee she is accurate (she was) he complained again saying she shouldn't have spoken out I pointed out that if he had marked her correctly she wouldn't have done i ended up at the school defending my child's right to be "right" when she was fucking right! It was an insane reaction by the teacher I agreed she shouldn't have called out they weren't concerned about that they were concerned she was focused on being historically accurate

So glad she moved schools the new school were very acceptable about being wrong saying sorry I got it wrong and moving on

The 'gray' was used in an Oak Academy Lesson, but don't get me started on them!

Ahh ok, that makes more sense then. Gray and practice are both American so they must be using American versions of Office 365 or they are not English born. But obviously in England, it is important to use the correct spelling.

If this is happening on a weekly basis you need to escalate to the head teacher. Children can’t learn if they’re constantly being given incorrect information.

@TooCold54 the correct forms of each were used throughout the text at the appropriate points, except for in two of the sentences. Definitely not as a result of a foreign author. Even if they were from America, if they are teaching in an English school they should be able to use the appropriate spelling. I wouldn't accept for 'color' for 'colour' just because the teacher was not English when teaching the children.

I'm debating whether to email teacher today... yr5 DSD had her first class zoom today. Teacher said 'I hope you're all able to keep in touch with each other at the moment, you can use WhatsApp, Snapchat, Instagram - they're a bit grown up but I'm sure mum and dad can show you how to use them if you're unsure'.

I'm we've spent months battling with DSD after she came to live with us, stressing that she's too young at NINE to have access to social media. She'd been allowed access to all these platforms with mum, and it backfired massively (obviously). Now her teacher is telling them it's ok???

Am sitting on it atm, hoping the teacher just had a bit of a brain fart, but feel like an email is probably wise before the next call!

@toocold54

The 'gray' was used in an Oak Academy Lesson, but don't get me started on them!

Ahh ok, that makes more sense then. Gray and practice are both American so they must be using American versions of Office 365 or they are not English born. But obviously in England, it is important to use the correct spelling.

Oak Academy is a VAST improvement on the teaching I'm seeing from DS's teacher, who seemingly has never witnessed an Ofsted Outstanding lesson in her life!!

I wouldn't accept for 'color' for 'colour' just because the teacher was not English when teaching the children.

I completely agree and think you did the right thing.
But teachers have to have spelling tests before they start training so they obviously know how to spell so I couldn't work out why she was putting it wrong but as you say she was writing it correctly too so it sounds like the spell checker was doing it automatically and she had missed a couple - which is still not ok as the children will get confused but it makes more sense now.

The teacher may have been working from someone else's document - that person may have made a typo and she was just reading what she saw (benefit of the doubt). It's easily done.

Recording lessons is a nightmare as one mistake means restarting.

Lots of teachers struggle with some aspects of teaching - this is why I chose secondary as I can concentrate on one subject!

I'm we've spent months battling with DSD after she came to live with us, stressing that she's too young at NINE to have access to social media. She'd been allowed access to all these platforms with mum, and it backfired massively (obviously). Now her teacher is telling them it's ok???

Social media is a bit much but whatsapp would be completely fine for me. As long as it is on your phone and you are seeing the messages then I think it is a lovely way to keep in touch with friends.

If you don't want them having your number then facebook may be better but you have the password and go on it with her to share photos with her friends and what they've been up to. Most schools will have a facebook page and the teachers post pictures of themselves which is a nice way to keep in touch.

Mixing causal and casual isn't an easy mistake to make in this context.
It suggests lack of care.

@SlipperTripper I would definitely report that to the school. Most of those are age restricted to 13. I would be so pissed at that and I am a teacher.

Gosh I made the mistake of highlighting a repetitive error on one of my DC’s PowerPoint presentations... I did it privately over tapestry.
The response I got back. Holy moly. An essay about “good mistakes” and how there was no shame in making errors, we are all only human etc etc (I could go on). I had literally sent one sentence. I can only guess I may have been the 100th parent to have mentioned it.... I now keep it shut.

I find it embarrassing when fellow teachers make lots of mistakes (and have quietly corrected errors our head has made) but the entry requirements and salary for teachers mean you can't really expect perfection. I was surprised when I realised I was the only teacher at my old school with a degree from a red brick university. Equally, I have made plenty of silly mistakes myself, including on answer keys when it's easy to mistype a number of whatever. I would produce these on a scarp of paper, if at all, in the classroom and just correct my mistake when I realised - answer keys are just an extra job of home learning (and yes I mark every single piece of work myself but I provide these for parents who want to check their child's work as they go).

Interested in the conjunction lesson. I'd need to double check the UKS2 curriculum as not taught that for a while, but my understanding was children need to know the difference between co-ordinating and sub-ordinating conjunctions, so introducing the term causal conjunctions seems rather unnecessary.

@SlipperTripper

I'm debating whether to email teacher today... yr5 DSD had her first class zoom today. Teacher said 'I hope you're all able to keep in touch with each other at the moment, you can use WhatsApp, Snapchat, Instagram - they're a bit grown up but I'm sure mum and dad can show you how to use them if you're unsure'.

I'm we've spent months battling with DSD after she came to live with us, stressing that she's too young at NINE to have access to social media. She'd been allowed access to all these platforms with mum, and it backfired massively (obviously). Now her teacher is telling them it's ok???

Am sitting on it atm, hoping the teacher just had a bit of a brain fart, but feel like an email is probably wise before the next call!

I'd definitely be in contact about that! Schools spend heaps of time teaching them internet safety- or should- and that's not appropriate at all!

Every single newsletter (weekly) from my child's school has spelling errors in it. (This happened pre-COVID as well.) At first I thought an administrator must be transcribing the newsletter and making typos, then watching a lesson I realised the teacher has trouble spelling...I haven't complained...it's not worth getting the teacher's back up. I just tell my child the correct spelling and we move on.

I don't think you did anything wrong by privately pointing out the error to your child's teacher.

I teach MFL and had an embarrassing moment in the middle of a grammar lesson when I started second and third guessing myself over the correct form of a pronoun. It was an A Level lesson, so a relatively advanced piece of grammar, but one we actually use fairly frequently. I just had a complete brain failure and couldn't remember whether there were a separate feminine plural form of this one word, or just one plural for both masculine and feminine. I kept on going back and forth between the two and eventually had to look it up in a book. I did profusely apologise to the class and explain that it was just one of those things where the more you look at it, the less certain you get.

Of course, on the other end of the scale, younger classes especially expect you to be a walking dictionary and know literally every piece of vocab at the drop of a hat. That's not how it works, even when you're teaching your own first language. There's a horrible lesson in KS3 where we teach how to say what your parents' jobs are. It is, predicatably, ridiculous, because we teach them a load of vocab like 'nurse', 'postman', 'engineer', 'builder', 'teacher' ... and then 90% of the parents have jobs like 'data systems analyst' and 'marketing project manager' so the whole lesson is spent trying to offer translations for a job where I have no idea what it means in either language.

@toocold54

The 'gray' was used in an Oak Academy Lesson, but don't get me started on them!

Ahh ok, that makes more sense then. Gray and practice are both American so they must be using American versions of Office 365 or they are not English born. But obviously in England, it is important to use the correct spelling.

gray and grey are both correct according to google while gray is more American.

But in English English, practice and practise are 2 different words.

practise is a verb and practice is a noun .
The s and c are used as verbs and nouns in lots of words.

devise and device
advice and advise

[quote eurochick]@Iggly our school asks that an adult be in the room during live lessons for safeguarding.

[/quote]
how does this work? i have to work while my kids have their zooms? i'm glad my school doesn't ask that

@SlipperTripper

I'm debating whether to email teacher today... yr5 DSD had her first class zoom today. Teacher said 'I hope you're all able to keep in touch with each other at the moment, you can use WhatsApp, Snapchat, Instagram - they're a bit grown up but I'm sure mum and dad can show you how to use them if you're unsure'.

I'm we've spent months battling with DSD after she came to live with us, stressing that she's too young at NINE to have access to social media. She'd been allowed access to all these platforms with mum, and it backfired massively (obviously). Now her teacher is telling them it's ok???

Am sitting on it atm, hoping the teacher just had a bit of a brain fart, but feel like an email is probably wise before the next call!

please tell the school.

My dds secondary have been recommending some platforms with a 13 age range and half the class are still 12. We get an email from school reassuring us that there are other options and that there is space for parental permissions etc etc.

And that is for 13 year olds. The school should NOT in any way be recommending that they use social media platforms

@toocold54

I've let a lot of stuff go (think gray instead of grey, of instead of have, practice instead of practise etc)

The spellings make me think she is either using an American version of word that can automatically change the spelling or she was taught to spell in a different country.

All teachers in England have to do a literacy and numeracy test before they do their teacher training.

Not anymore- this was scrapped 2 years ago.

Teachers should be prepared to admit mistakes to their pupils, it's really quite a valuable lesson for them. I have a friend who is dyspraxic and struggles with the difference between right and left. She tells her primary school class at the beginning of the year and asks them to keep an eye on her and let her know when she's got it wrong. They love it, they pay extra attention to see if they can catch her out, they all learn the concepts of right and left brilliantly themselves, and most importantly they learn that it's OK to have a learning difficulty.

Of course teachers make mistakes...and I’m going to be totally honest and I may get flamed but there are some really shit teachers about.

I work with teachers (I have a degree) and I would say that a few are brilliant, most are good and some are crap. I’ve see mistakes, patronising tones of voice, and just unsuitable personalities for the job. I think some teachers go into it because they don’t know what else to do with their degrees. Most don’t love their subject or are itching to educate.

You did the right think op.