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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

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

378 replies

intothenever · 15/12/2013 16:44

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!

OP posts:
HesterShaw · 15/12/2013 22:54

Ok, but think of the spelling and grammar teaching we had in the 80s and the constructive and informative feedback we received. There was NONE.

Children aren't reading fir pleasure as much nowadsys - there are too many other distractions for them. Primary teachers teach far more punctuation and grammar than they did then. Who remembers being taught main and subordinate clauses back in the 80s? No one, I'll bet.

OrlandoWoolf · 15/12/2013 22:57

hestershaw

I had the benefit of a Grammar school education which included Latin. This was in the 80s. I can tell you a lot about clauses. Grin

Philoslothy · 15/12/2013 22:59

I have a see me stamp that I use in books. They will then have an exercise to do in their book so that it is clear what the See Me was about .

Nanny0gg · 15/12/2013 23:05

TeamHank But the improvements (yes, I think they are) are very recent. The grammar test in the SATs was introduced last year (I think, I'm 'retired'). So you won't have seen much improvement through to secondary yet.
I absolutely agree that relatively recent standards have been poor.

'Writing "see me" is not acceptable these days.' Seems to me we've found one of the reasons why literacy levels have plummeted right there. I would have thought that having a brief opportunity to engage with a pupil 1:1 and check that they've actually understood something that has been taught would be invaluable.

That's why marking is individually targeted now. Each child knows what they should have done and if they haven't, what they need to do to get there. And if they really don't 'get it', the teaching will be focused there.

'See me' would mean queues of children in primary class. Doesn't work like that, thank goodness.

HesterShaw · 15/12/2013 23:08

Ok. Ok. :o

Who apart from the grammar school kids were taught about clauses? Because I wasn't until I learned German in comprehensive.

storynanny · 15/12/2013 23:12

Intothenever. Old teacher here, it is totally unacceptable, you must follow it up.

Pixel · 15/12/2013 23:16

Queues? Really? Hmm
In that case maybe the whole class could do with going over the lesson.

steppemum · 15/12/2013 23:20

I couldn't let this go. I don't mind the odd mistake, and when I listen to the teachers talk there are a lot of phrases that make me cringe which are actually local accent. (not very obvious or strong, so has taken me a while to realise that is what it is) Can't think of an example of the top of my head

But when she has corrected your dd to something to very wrong, I would comment - probably in a friendly way.

Philoslothy · 15/12/2013 23:20

I know I teach secondary so it may be different, but if I had queues of children at my desk each week I would seriously question my teaching.

Nanny0gg · 15/12/2013 23:22

Pixel

Only if they haven't grasped the same concept.

Some children may not have 'got' paragraphs. Some semi-colons. Some specific spelling conventions. Some how to efficiently plan a piece of writing.

They all have their own targets. Yes, some may have the same as others, but there will always be 'individuals'!

Philoslothy · 15/12/2013 23:22

All children will have a comment in their book from me that is individual. They usually have some kind of task to do as a result of my marking. Sometimes I put a See Me Stamp, never more than two in a class.

Nanny0gg · 15/12/2013 23:23

Philoslothy

Quite. When my youngest was at primary in the early 90s, I remember lots of queues in KS1 for marking.

Doesn't happen now.

Nanny0gg · 15/12/2013 23:28

But to get back to the OP -

Yes, the teacher ought to know how apostrophes should be used!

TwistedRib · 15/12/2013 23:41

In Scotland under the new Curriculum for Mediocrity , teachers, according to COSLA , should not be educators but facilitators . Therefore it doesn't matter that children don't know the rules of grammar, as long as they know where to find them.

OrlandoWoolf · 16/12/2013 07:06

2 stars and a wish

Well done for using full stops.
Well done for using capitals at the start.
I wish you would not write a whole story with just one full stop. a capital and lots of ands Grin

SB - looking at you.

Jaynebxl · 16/12/2013 07:11

She has just started writing? So she is presumably in reception? And you are thinking her teacher is teaching her apostrophes! it seems what you actually mean is her teacher made a spelling mistake herself. String her up!

My dc in reception / year 1 stuck apostrophes in randomly before the letter s. It was because they had seen apostrophes before an s in various books and didn't get the rule. I wouldn't think the teacher had mistaught them!

LindyHemming · 16/12/2013 07:11

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

LindyHemming · 16/12/2013 07:15

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

YouTheCat · 16/12/2013 07:30

My grammar is far from perfect but I can string a sentence together just about . I learned this by writing endless stories in primary school in the 70s.

These days they spend way too much time learning how to design leaflets and write short articles. They have taken all the joy out of creative writing.

BabyMummy29 · 16/12/2013 08:03

I find a lot of people, adults as well as children, stick apostrophes in any plural so we get photo's, cat's etc.

I say to them that they wouldn't write photo' or cat' in the singular form, so why stick an apostrophe in when you add an s.

They usually look totally mystified, so I just give up trying and leave them in their ignorance.

TheWomanTheyCallJayne · 16/12/2013 08:07

I feel sorry for teachers from my generation. The lost generation when it comes to grammar. I know we weren't taught much, the one thing I do remember is being told to use commas where we would take a breathe. I don't think we covered commas again.

Rather than a test to see a potential teacher's levels. Wouldn't it be better just to have a session of intensive spag teaching?

BabyMummy29 · 16/12/2013 08:17

Unfortunately the teaching of grammar seems to have been abandoned during some trendy reforms in teaching.

I've been teaching for so long now that I have seen so many of these fads come and go, have realised they're a heap of poo and have still been around to see the results.

TheWomanTheyCallJayne · 16/12/2013 08:37

*breath damnit

Nanny0gg · 16/12/2013 08:54

Have a look here:

www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/260491/PRIMARY_national_curriculum_-_English_RS2.pdf

Scroll down to page 64.

Rigorous enough? Or has anything been missed?

Oh, and it is what is being taught in primary now, btw, even though this is for 2014.

JapaneseMargaret · 16/12/2013 09:13

What is it about apostrophes that sends people a-dither?

Why do people think the plural form requires an apostrophe? Actually, reading that sentence back, you never see people add an s into 'requires'. Grin

Why? Why do people grasp it with certain words, but not others?

You see it on Baby Name threads here all the time, when people are talking about the number of Evies, Millys and Jacks. Throwing erroneous apostrophes in before the s.

It's as if it's actual rocket science. It's not rocket science though. It's logical and straight-forward, and unlike many aspects of the English language, the rule does not change.

I do have to say, auto-correct has an awful lot to answer for. It often insists on throwing in incorrect apostrophes. The Apple grammar 'guru' is a dunce.