to want my child's teacher to understand how apostrophes work!!!

[intothenever]

DD is writing things like 'She live's in a house' and has been taught that the plural of potato is potato's! I am getting really pissed off!

Technically though OP, those things at the end of your thread title aren't question marks, are they? Unless three !s now make a ?

'Potato's' is piss poor though - I'd mention it. The superfluous apostrophes your very, very young daughter is using, I really wouldn't worry about.

I make SPaG errors all the bloody time, mainly typos but sometimes just because I don't know it all.

I was agreeing with you, Johnny, technically it is a question and should have had question marks, not exclamation marks.

I really struggle with the idea of emergent writing - if you don't correct kids' mistakes then they think they're getting it right and spell words wrong for years - very hard to then unlearn their incorrect spellings and relearn new ones.

I know we have to strike a balance but given the woeful standards of literacy in this country we have to assume something has gone badly wrong with how we teach it.

I can't remember having seen any poster claim that expecting teachers to be able to spell and punctuate is elitist and spiteful .

I think there are ways of complaining that could possibly be seen as spiteful . But not the mere expectation that teachers are literate .

YANBU. I am a teacher. I wasn't taught grammar, spelling and punctuation much at school (educated in 70s/80s), so I had to teach myself to the level that's necessary. I did this because I was writing a lot for publication at the time, however, it's come in very useful in teaching.

Given that a significant number teachers (representative of their generation), lack confidence in this area, I think there should be mandatory online training that you do every year - teachers could be referred for it if mistakes are picked up in lesson observations (literacy is included in the Teaching Standards).

One literacy test at the beginning of the training isn't enough.

Number of teachers

In my experience SPAG of Indian-educated students is also excellent.

I think encouraging teachers to refresh is a good idea. Our English department run courses that some of our teachers attend, or provide materials that teachers find helpful.

Well that is a stupid sentiment then. I tend to pop up on most education threads and appear to have missed it.

Emergent writing does not mean that work isn't corrected.

It just means that not everything is corrected.

And if infants spend their entire time worrying about SPAG they would never write anything.
It also means the teacher can see exactly what they do and don't understand.
Much better than the days when they told the teacher what they wanted to say, the teacher wrote it and they copied it.
What rules did they learn that way?

Agreed, snowed. I just find it frustrating that they do not spend an afternoon going over the rudiments of grammar!

How would you expect that to work in a Reception class? (just curious)

Apostrophes are not part of the EYFS.

Blame Thatcher. She removed the teaching of SPAG from the NC. It was only brought back recently.

I don't think it is just teachers who don't know , as a previous poster said many of us educated in the 80s only learned grammar in our MFL lessons.

Whether it is refresher or learn from scratch, I think the sessions are useful.

We do have some older members of staff who attend who are in their 50s, I would have thought that they were taught grammar, so it is a refresher for them - maybe they just turn up for the refreshments. We also have quite a few privately educated staff, I would have thought that in the more traditional environment of a public school they may have learned grammar - but I could be wrong.

That would give me the rage. I would definitely have corrected the correction in an even redder red pen. Our school has done similar though: I go in once a week to read with my son in class and every week I have to correct the signing-in sheet, which has columns headed 'Name, Date, Name of child your supporting' .

I was made to go to grammar lessons at university. Often I was singled out as an example of the poor product of state education . My essays might be shared for public humiliation and my speech was often corrected .

Emergent writing does not mean that work isn't corrected.
It just means that not everything is corrected.
And if infants spend their entire time worrying about SPAG they would never write anything.

How do kids know what they've done wrong if it's not corrected? I thought it was better to know if something was wrong the first time the mistake was made? Or is it a process where mistakes are progressively corrected? (just preparing for when our DC starts school, I'm not being narky, honestly)

OP sorry to slightly derail. I'm rather worried by the possible implications of finding a teacher correction of "potato's" in my (or anyone's) DC's homework. I'd definitely ask the teacher about it.

Some years ago I horrified my SIL by stating that it would not be too long before the "elite" would be those, who could read and write English correctly. It would appear that my prediction is more than in my imagination.
I would "question" these "corrections" in the strongest possible terms.