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!

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.

But, fortunately, there is education subsequent to primary school, and any teacher who is not at or about retirement age has done either a three year BEd or a four year first degree plus PGCE as a minimum prior to being unleashed on the classroom. They could at some point during that education have taken it upon themselves to learn some grammar. If you arrive at 21 or 22 in your first teaching job and don't have sufficient grasp of English to teach the current primary curriculum, you need to go and read a book on grammar. It's not difficult.

Youthecat, absolutely right, that is what is going on in schools today. Like another poster, I have been teaching so long that Ive seen all the nonsense come and go, interspersed with the sensible stuff. How terrible that children/ adults have suffered depending on which decade they were schooled in.
However, I also agree with the poster who said teachers should just get on and learn it, it is not difficult. If you want to be a teacher and be responsible for teaching others, you need to get it right!
My OH has English as a second language, was taught English as a child in a third world country in the 1960s and 70's. His written English, spelling, punctuation and sentence construction is perfect and puts some English born adults to shame. If he can do it then so should teachers!

I'm not one for teacher bashing, but some of my colleagues really do need to sort this out. Have been getting really irate at the number of student teachers whining about not being able to resit their literacy/numeracy skills tests until they pass, but instead only having 3 chances. Come on. Basic literacy and numeracy shouldn't be too much to expect from a teacher at any level.

Do teachers correct writing at that age? Not meant to be sarky or anything. Ours don't (dc in y1) and we have been told to not do it when they write at home either as it might dent their confidence. Is this just how our particular teacher does it?

YANBU. At all.

Apostrophe of omission, apostrophe of possession - what's so difficult about that?

I'd agree with PPs that it tends to be MFL students who have a better grasp of grammar than their monolingual counterparts. I'd even go so far as to wager that British students would find learning second and third languages much easier, were they only taught English grammar correctly initially.

Do teachers correct writing at that age? Not meant to be sarky or anything. Ours don't (dc in y1) and we have been told to not do it when they write at home either as it might dent their confidence. Is this just how our particular teacher does it?

FFS this pisses me off. Positively framed formative feedback is not going to put somebody off writing.

I really really don't get the "Mistakes happen/teachers are only human" argument.

How many people misspell their own name? My maiden name was quite awkward to spell. However tired or rushed I was I never got it wrong.

If you aren't as familiar with SPAG as you are with your own name you shouldn't be teaching it. It should come automatically.

Recently we were looking round schools for DS1. Loads of kids' work on display including one essay where the child had correctly written "who's" and the teacher had red penned it to read "whose".

Years ago I wrote a horror story and my teacher red penned my "grisly" to read "grizzly". It still rankles

I think teachers work incredibly hard, and they are generally lovely and well meaning.

However, there is absolutely no excuse for our children being taught by people who do not have a grasp of spelling and grammar. Apostrophes and their correct usage is absolutely basic.

Call me an elitist and interfering old bag, but I have been known to correct school letters in red pen and return to the head teacher. Some of the spellings and grammar coming from our DCs primary school were shocking. The day I got a note telling me that DC2 would be making cooky's the next day and would I send in flower as my contribution I marched straight into the office

Middle - that is appalling!

WTF is elitist about insisting on proper SPAG?

I'm as common as muck and went to a roughish comprehensive on an estate. I couldn't give a lecture on the finer points of grammar or sentence construction but we're talking about basics here. The rules we are talking about are simple!

WTF is elitist about insisting on proper SPAG?

The people who think it's elitist have a tendency to have perfect knowledge themselves. The reason they don't want to taught is precisely because it might even the playing field a bit, and that would never do.

Have you ever seen the difference in writing from Early Years to Year 2, say? I was bemused when dd1 started writing at school and things like 'theis is my haws it hs a greeyn dor' got 'well done dd, I like the sound of your green door', and we got the comment that her writing was 'phonetically plausible' etc.

But it works - you don't make a child a good writer by making them mindlessly copy out corrections. Looking through dd2's Leaving Book from primary, I see:

i has enjyd beeyin in ulyees I lik plaeeyin in the riterin ereey
With the teacher's comment: I have enjoyed being in Early Years. I like playing in the writing area. Great writing A Which I imagine is making plenty of people turn puce as they read it.

I see in year 2:
Dear Santa, Please may I have a pot of new hamabeads, a new stocking and a box of sweets. Please may you bring one of these presnes. Thank you and have a very happy Christmas.
Good. You have used commas very well! Which she had.

Yes, insist on good spelling and grammar - but you don't hit them over the head with it all at once, at 6.

OMG Middle! Cooky's?!!
Never mind the spelling !

I understand that the correct use apostrophes can be tricky sometimes especially when it comes to the plural form of possessive nouns and with a noun that finishes with S etc.

There is a big difference between being confused on where to place the apostrophe if a word needs one (to make sense ie before or after the S) and between not knowing the plain plural form of a noun that never needs an apostrophe. EVER!

The later is a FAIL. I would not want this teacher to teach my child.

Can someone clarify ? So if I understand correctly, there are currently no English grammar lessons as part of the curriculum in this country? ( I was not brought up here) hence the bewilderment

Gramar is taught, but often badly. I recently observed a lesson where an English teacher (secondary school) was teaching the class what nouns were. Sadly she, errr, clearly didn't know what a noun was herself...

Grammar! Typo, honest :).

clearly didn't know what a noun was herself.

What? What? How hard can that be?

The people who think it's elitist have a tendency to have perfect knowledge themselves. The reason they don't want to taught is precisely because it might even the playing field a bit, and that would never do.

I think the opposite can be true. People who've learned good spelling and grammar wonder why others haven't 1) been given the same opportunities or 2) bothered to learn, especially if this knowledge is required for their job.

I once taught English to adults, and though I know quite well what a noun is, explaining it is surprisingly hard.

It worries me that teachers can teach at primary level without a basic grasp of spelling and punctuation. Couldn't they at the very least devote some INSET days to the subject?

Can I quietly point out that it is a minority we are speaking about? That it isn't only some primary teachers that can have an issue with SPAG, it has been known for the occasional secondary teacher to get it wrong too. If you go in and talk to the teachers and see how the current marking system operates you will see why the way writing is taught now does work - if only because the children are so involved in the process that they see the point that the teacher is making.

(Read TheOriginalSteamingNit's post above)

YANBU

In the early years, surely it's best to let little ones express themselves without them being censored for poor punctuation and grammar. However, I agree that it's such a shame that your DD's work has been corrected so badly.

In my line of work I see graduates come out of university unable to string a sentence together or use apostrophes correctly. I regularly come across journalists and editors who do not understand how to use apostrophes.

Its and it's being a common blunder. It's shocking!

I can see it both ways: I do get infuriated by comma splices in some letters home, but a) I don't suppose they were written by a teacher and b) even if they were, whilst it would annoy me, I wouldn't want to storm in about it. Plenty of people don't seem to have a ghost of an idea where to put a comma, after all.

Anyway, I do think it is precisely spiteful and unpleasant to do things like sending letters back 'corrected', but I don't think this teacher should be allowed to correct to 'potato's', if that's what she's done. And I also think that over-correcting of very small children's work isn't the way you teach them to write properly. You can't do everything all at once, and a child in early years should be encouraged first to be fluent and happy in writing: then you have six more years to do the tweaks.

It's also worth bearing in mind that one person's 'heavily implied' is another person's 'wilfully miscontrued', of course.