to be fed up with correcting teacher's spelling mistakes

[dealer]

No doubt I will now write a post riddled with spelling mistakes, but I'm not teaching small children in my defence.

I accept, no-one can spell everything, and I would not be surprised if a teacher had to look up stationary/stationery for instance. But I'm really fed up with ones that I would expect children to be able to spell turning up in homework/letters/displays. And I feel compelled to correct them.

Recently we've had Antartica, in huge coloured letters on a display. Got me a very grumpy response since he then felt he had to change it. We've had a work sheet home with Autum on. My son asked for barbecue/barbeque in his spelling book (not sure how to spell it myself) but I think the teacher writing bar-b-q is a bit out of order. And the latest one is the teacher correcting squirl to skwirel on homework. I wrote on it in red 'teacher please correct correctly', possibly a bit snotty of me but I'm getting fed up of it.

Do other people get this? And do they get annoyed? Or AIBU?

Agree verlaine, my kids are huge readers and terrible spellers.

And the teacher I mentioned above (who said she hadn't been paying attention when she marked things incorrectly) - I just don't buy this as an excuse, I think if you're a good speller you notice incorrect spelling automatically. You might miss one or two mistakes or spell something wrong when you're tired or distracted, but if it's a regular thing, you're not a good speller.

I used to point out spelling errors to dd's primary school teacher. I was a bit embarrassed about it but felt I had to as she was sending out lists of words for children to learn for homework and they were incorrect. To give her her due she did make the effort to put the corrections up at hometime the next day so that parents could see them when they collected their children (and put them right before the spelling tests), but she really shouldn't have been making the errors in the first place.

My mum was a school caretaker and she had to go into one of the classrooms every morning to check the spellings in the work that the teacher had put on the board because he was so inept. She used to say to him "FGS I'm the cleaner, surely you shouldn't be having to ask me!".

Spelling is reinforced by writing; "muscle memory". That's why wordprocessing in schools, particularly primary, is the death of correct spelling, and good handwriting.

Before anyone tells me that the future is the computer, almost all exams are handwritten.

Not for long though echt!

My ds currently has a teacher with atrocious punctuation who makes frequent errors in the weekly emails - don't think we've had one error-free one yet. Am contemplating complaining but would leave it if she seemed in other ways an excellent teacher. Did meet her at parents' evening last week and she seemed...uninspiring. But I'm still holding fire. It's only November.

I think I can trump the 'skwirel' though. At primary school, I had a teacher who insisted on correcting my surname (I have a fairly hard-to-write Germanic surname), writing the English spelling rule 'i before e except after c' in red pen next to it, to help me 'remember'. It's my name! It's a surname! It's German not English! Argggghh.

I can see it will change, though how you mark English, History or Literature, where the quality and expression of thought is part of the marking, I don't know.

As I understand, it the present programs reward bog-standard expression and answers, leaving the very poor or very brilliant/leftfield candidates out of it.

Good point echt. I am an excellent speller , but these days I hardly write anything by hand, just on the computer. When I do write by hand, the letters sometimes end up in the wrong order not to mention illegible .

Also, my dd's year 5 teacher used to ask her how to spell 'hard' words before writing them on the board. Which could show a positive willingness to learn and be corrected, and a lack of self-importance getting in the way of good teaching...except that actually, my dd's spelling is nothing to write home about, and I frequently have to correct it myself.

My partner's sister is a qualified teacher. I read her assignments when she was a trainee and she didn't know the difference between their and there and were and where.

Of course yanbu. If you received a letter from a lawyer, doctor etc filled with stupid spelling mistakes you'd be and rightfully so. Teachers are no different. (I am one.)

While I'm here, the prospect of thousands and thousands of students logging in at the same time all over the country on GCSE English day. Hmmm.

Here in Oz, the Ultranet, developed at a cost of millions of dollars, was meant to change the way Victorian teachers communicate with parents, students, each other. Every school in the state was forced to close to students on the launch day.

It crashed and burned within half an hour. Couldn't take the strain of just the teachers logging on at the same time.

Have we heard of it since? Nah.

Amusingly, the in-house rag of the Education department had anticipated success, and gone to press before D-day, so the next issue proclaimed it a roaring success, with testimonials from many satisfied customers.:o

Teachers should spell words correctly, but whatever means available to them if it is area in which they struggle. All teachers, in all subjects. OFSTED would slaughter a school for teachers making multiple mistakes under the new framework. And bad handwriting. No joke.

I actually got told off once for correcting each spelling mistake as I went along (am secondary English), I was amazed. I know their arguments for not, but was still fundamentally against my idea of teaching, doesn't take that long either.

Enough to mean that I now struggle with the thought of sending dd and her future sibling anywhere for education really.

Hmm, I agree with you - my dd's Year 2 teacher corrected dd's correct 'monkeys' to 'monkies'!!!!

'my dd's year 5 teacher used to ask her how to spell 'hard' words before writing them on the board. Which could show a positive willingness to learn and be corrected, and a lack of self-importance getting in the way of good teaching'

I use that as a teaching strategy B & B, please don't assume I can't spell.
It is a good way to assess an individual's spelling strategies.

Depressingly, spelling in schools hasn't been a priority for some time, meaning that younger teachers have often not been taught properly themselves.

Add to this the fact that teaching is the lowest paid graduate only job, and there is clearly a problem. The best and brightest do not tend to be tempted by the low pay and hard work offered by a teaching job. There are some exception, obviously, but you'd have to be pretty dedicated to the idea of teaching to turn down the more lucrative offers, if you are highly qualified and eloquent in written and spoken english.

So is it really any wonder that standards and falling and then falling even more? Add in the fact that lots of adults get angry about being corrected (as can often be seen in posts on here).

The basc literacy and numeracy skills tests for teachers are just that. Basic.

Arguably though, by the point of training to be a teacher, it is too late to correct basic flaws in grammar and spelling. That should have been established at primary and polished at secondary, not left until a post-graduate level.

The moral of the story is, in my view, ''pay peanuts, get monkeys''.

Or monkies, judging by CocktailQueen's post!

Not thrilled with the monkeys comment, however...

As I said, OFSTED now have a massive focus on literacy across the curriculum. Which might be just as well, as the standard of written and spoken English of the children coming into our secondary school has decreased demonstrably in the last five years.

I mark every error I see, unless the student has great weaknesses, in which case I target one or two, so as not to overwhelm them with the red ink.

Why aren't you thrilled with it, Madonna?

YANBU. That's shocking. I'd be complaining asap.

Don't want to pee in your chips, Madonna, but Literacy Across the Curriculum has been doing the rounds in its various forms since the early 80s.
I approve of it heartily.

It has its natural home in the primary school, where a single teacher is taking most, if not all of the subjects.

In secondary, it's my sad experience that only the English teachers really bothered. It's the marking; it IS an increase in the workload and people can't be arsed/ aren't interested/made to do it.

echt the system architecture wouldn't necessarily have to be like that - it wouldn't need thousands of students logging on in one go.

" At primary school, I had a teacher who insisted on correcting my surname (I have a fairly hard-to-write Germanic surname), writing the English spelling rule 'i before e except after c' in red pen next to it, to help me 'remember'. It's my name! It's a surname! It's German not English! Argggghh."

although slightly less than originally - when I thought s/he was doing this to you as a parent of a child in his or her class. Still ridiculous to do it to a child but slightly less so!

Something is not working in our feeder primaries. We have the largest proportion of pupils working at or below a level 3 on entry that we have ever had. We have sets full of non readers (literally). It is ridiculous.