To expect my DCs' teachers to send out school reports correctly punctuated?

[Peppin]

Was looking at last term's school reports this morning. They included the following statements:

"Its good to see X progressing so well"

"theres a good reason for..."

and a few other howlers.

I have also noticed when looking through the DCs' school workbooks at parents' evenings that various spelling mistakes/grammatical errors they have made have gone uncorrected.

AIBU to expect teachers to (a) know how to use apostrophes and (b) take sufficient pride in their own professional image to ensure they check the spelling and punctuation in school reports before they are sent out?

And how do you feel? No-one is perfect!

Very well-said Rose

Catsmama that I think is fairly unforgiveable, especially if they are the short paragraph-type reports for individual subjects. Unfortunately many schools use a system that is little more than a choice of comments plucked from a drop-down menu. I once had the same report three years running from a history teacher. Pulled him up on it too!

Allowing for the fact that I'm 104, things do appear to have changed a bit in the teaching of the English.

The correct wording etc wasn't just given to me to copy out, the mistake was highlighted and I had to work out what it was in order to write it out correctly etc.

And OP - no, YANBU.

I got very annoyed when ds was referred to by a different name half way through his yr 7 report.

I get very annoyed by bad spelling and punctuation.:;/!!!!!!!

YANBU...I'm a teacher...totally agree. However, we are human. I'm currently say here writing my 30 reports (averaging 1300 words per child!) - trust me, my eyes/brain can barely function and everything is merging on the page.

re. school work. I do not correct every single spelling mistake/grammar mistake. Some of my children would then literally have no work untouched by my red pen. I correct what I believe they SHOULD be able to do/spell at their age. Also, if I have corrected a word already, I will not correct it every time it is incorrect. Again, do the maths - 30 kids, 5 pieces of lit every week, 3hrs to mark their books, multiply that by 5 for all the written subjects...and tell me when exactly I'm supposed to have the time to do that! (I already work 7.30am until 6pm, then again 8-9pm every night and every Sunday all day)

On a separate note however, I do agree with posters' comments about teachers who can't spell/use grammar. On my PGCE course were many 22 year olds who could not differentiate between 'their, they're and there' or 'our and are' nor did they know their times tables. As a mature student on the course, I have to say, I'm not sure that kids these days are taught as well in general!

I am taking no responsibility for any missed typos or grammar points throughout this post!

YANBU. However, it is easy to make a mistake and as others have said these things take vast amounts of time. I would be concerned if mistakes were repeated suggesting there was a lack of knowledge rather than a mere typo.

However I am pretty sure you have made an error in your first message. Since children is a collective noun it should read DC's teachers. They are not the teachers of the 'dear childrens' which is what your punctuation would imply.

Ok LapisBlue, I was taught the same way (approaching thirty) but you'd have needed some grounding in phonetics or a decent visual memory to realise what the mistake was. Or at the very least the ability to use a dictionary. Slightly off-topic too but I was taught to spell by copying words down. Luckily I'm very visual too so I can see if a word 'looks wrong'. If I come across a word I can't spell I have to write it on a horizontal surface. I can't spell it out orally, I can't write it out on a board it has to be paper on a table. This is because my brain has linked the movement in my hand to how it looks on paper, directly because of the way I learnt to spell. Not very handy if I need to spell something out loud(!)

Now the emphasis is talking through the work with the child, highlighting the positives and then providing some steps for them to achieve in order to move forward. For example I might praise a child for the fantastic vocabulary then give them a target to use full stops next time, along with showing them how to do this. Google 'assessment for learning' it's very interesting stuff.

I guess we're all now paranoid about spelling on this thread!

To be serious, though, if we assume that a proportion of teachers, as has been already mentioned, don't know the difference between "there/they're" and so on, would it be fair ALSO to assume that these mistakes were corrected and that said teachers can now ACTUALLY spell now, as well as being able to add up.

Were there spelling classes during your PGCE for adults into whose hands the education of the nation's children were going to be handed?

Please say...yes.

I think the point is if they are typos then it's forgiveable, if a teacher really does have a crap grasp of spelling and punctuation then it's not on.

Itdoesnthurt do you find it hard to proof-read your own reports? Only because I know I do! My brain will fill in what it thinks I've typed!

Hi, cherrypie - yes, it was blimmin' hard trying to work out why the word I'd written was incorrect but it was assumed by the teachers that at the age of whatever I should have been able to spell it - and they were right.

If I'd just been given the correct spelling and copied it out I don't think I would have taken on board how to do it properly. But there you go...I was lucky that my Mum had taught me to read at a very young age indeed, not everyone has that.

LapisBlue in Wales we had to sit a basic skills test in English, Maths and Sceince and they are raising the GCSE expectations for teachers in order to weed out this sort of thing.

I know a couple of colleagues who can't place an apostrophe to save their lives :(

There we go! My family were the same! I'm sure you had books read to you too?

The research into 'talk a lot' families who use wide vocabularies, read with their kids and instill a love of reading shows that children from these homes have better language skills.

Yes, my sister and I had (blushes) Big Ears and Noddy as well as Winnie the Pooh, read to us every night before bed. And the "Christopher Robin is saying his prayers" poem (Vespers) still makes me a bit emotional!

A.A. Milne is very dear to my heart!

What do people think about spelling mistakes in the weekly lists of spellings sent out for children to learn? Can even teachers agree that this particular area of human error is a little unfortunate? Especially if the child then writes the correct spelling and is corrected?

Are you serious - there are mistakes in the lists for children to learn? WTAF?

What would Eeyore say? Or is it Eyore?!

I used to have a teacher who'd underline words in my essays as badly spelt- I looked them up in a dictionary, a bit bemused- and they were all right. She just didn't know how to spell them herself.

I've had loads of mistakes skipped over in language lessons too, specially grammar. People looked vaguely surprised/indignant when a native French speaker came in and started pulling us up on everything!

I correct what I believe they SHOULD be able to do/spell at their age.

I'm really not trying to zone in on you particularly, but I think this points to one of the big problems- if children can forge ahead, why are they being restricted to recommended age limits? If they're trying to use complicated structures, they should be encouraged, not have the problem glazed over. Again, no offence, I just noticed it and thought it interested.

*interesting

There used to be, Lapis, when dd was at primary. I have a feeling the job of compiling the weekly spelling list was probably left to the weakest member of staff because the others had more important jobs to do.

The choice of spellings was pretty odd too; it was all thematic, depending on what they were learning that week in other subjects, so the week they did Australia one of the spellings was Neighbours with a capital N.

Spelling lists are not good practice. Spelling mistakes in those lists are awful!

Quirrel perhaps an extra proviso on that statement should at their age or ability. I can't think of any reasonable person who would want to hold a pupil back! It is in our interests to get them moving!!

As a university teacher, I have noticed that I am increasingly spending my time teaching undergraduates the rules of the apostrophe and the basics of punctuation. And we only take students with A grades in English A-level.

YANBU- they are usually read by the Head and signed, so should have been corrected. Since they are generally cut and paste in the first place there is no excuse!

Colry, all I can say is: OMG and LOL at Neighbours ("everybody needs good neighbours...").

OMG again at the assumption that staff had more important jobs than getting involved in teaching spelling. I'm sure this doesn't occur everywhere, though.