To wish teachers had to take a spelling proficiency test before qualifying?

[ChwatFeechers]

DD, 11, is in her final year of primary school.

Yesterday she brought her books home from year 5. I was gobsmacked at the number of spelling mistakes which had been missed, whilst others had been marked in green pen. It wasn't an oversight either, as the same mistake was made often without being corrected, for example Febury for February.
There were also some grammar corrections to things DD had written correctly.
This isn't the first time I've noticed mistakes either.
AIBU to wish teachers had to prove they can spell adequately?
[runs]

recognise! Yes I think it was recognize that she was told.

TTWK there was a class assembly recently and the reception class sang the alphabet song.

Hearing 30 small children bellow "haitch" was not good! I don't get that worked up about it although I don't like it but I thought in conversation is one thing why are you teaching them to sing it and make it "official"???!!!

The haitch is on a par with teachers who labour under the misapprehension that "something" has a k on the end. I attended a talk at dd's school and the person doing the presentation did this. I nearly stood up and roared.

LOL TTWK, I could live with Haitch, it's "DS done well in science" that makes me shudder.

"It's aitch, not sodding haitch."

I had to phone HMRC the other day and the recorded message when you first get through says "Haitch M R C" Grrrrr

Good heavens - that's frightful.

Bring back Miss Read!

Not a new phenomenon I fear. Having taught in universities I was really shocked at the poor level of written English among the students. Not the foreign students mind you - the native speakers. The foreign students could wield an apostrophe with ease.

I completely disagree with the only highlighting three errors thing. For goodness sakes! How wet is that? How will they learn?

Seeing things written down correctly is key - that's one of the things children get from regular reading - they see the proper spelling, and sentence structure again and again until it gets lodged in their heads.

I remember having both maths and English items that were correct erroneously corrected by teachers. I also remember getting whacked with a ruler for politely pointing it out.

I would rather have the TAs marking the spellings than the children. When ds3 was in Year 3, I started being a bit more hands-off about the spellings he had to learn. Instead of sitting with him and testing him on them, I just asked him each week how he had done in the test. If he'd been doing badly, I would have gone back to testing him at home and helping him more - but he told me each week he was getting all, or almost all correct, so I assumed he was learning the words.

However, when his spelling book came home at the end of the year, and I flicked through it, I soon noticed that whoever was marking the tests was marking as correct, words that were misspelled. When I asked him who had marked them, it turned out it was 'Peer marking' - they swapped books and marked each other's tests.

So he thought he knew how to spell a whole raft of words, but was actually spelling them incorrectly. Worse, no-one seemed to have picked up on this during the year - there were no re-markings by the teacher and no indication that anyone had noticed that, on tests where he got 19 out of 20, for example, he'd only actually spelled 7 words correctly.

Please tell me that's a joke; the children were marking each other's tests with no checking?!

It's no real wonder we are sliding down the international rankings for educational achievement is it? When British children can't compete in what is now an international job market, I imagine the fact that their self esteem wasn't damaged by brutal marking of errors may be somewhat cold comfort to them.

Not that they should be competing for jobs while still children. I'm not that harsh

DDs class they mark each other's tests. I didn't think anything of it! I imagine the teacher stands at the front and reads out the correct spellings for them to mark, hence how the "recognise/recognize" thing came out. DD got it marked wrong and she asked the teacher and the teacher told her she had to spell it how it said on the sheet ie with a z.

z is perfectly acceptable these days in some words, it's a matter of preference. Teacher probably wouldn't give her the mark because they thought she (on your instruction) was being a smartarse!

I had to phone HMRC the other day and the recorded message when you first get through says "Haitch M R C" Grrrrr

That's the most depressing this I have read in ages. The aitch battle is well and truly lost of Her Majesty's govt have thrown in the towel.

[She 'corrected' my spelling and added: 'i before e except after c'.]

Did you ask her to weigh up the amount of beige words that slip through and thank whatever Deity that you do?

I'm a secondary English teacher. I correct:

1. the first five random spelling errors
2. any subsequent key vocabulary (eg. technical terms like 'hyperbole', authors' names, quotations which should have been copied absolutely accurately from a text in front of them).

If I am teaching a weak class, often the first job when I return the books is 'write out your corrected spellings three times each'. Then at the end of the lesson I'll get them to close their books, 'pick on' a couple of kids whose mistakes I've made a discreet note of when marking & say 'Sam, how do you spell ___?'

Some of them think this is witchcraft - they assume I either have perfect recall of every error made by every kid in the class, or can read closed exercise books....

But tbh, I mark in line with school policy. Every couple of years someone on the SLG has it as their performance management target, so they'll set up a Marking Working Party who will design a new merit sticker, introduce Purple Pens of Progress & insist on a spellings grid to be glued in everyone's books.

The rest of us just nod, smile & get on with it...

Nope, not a joke, Alconleigh - the tests with misspelled words marked correctly continued throughout the year, and there was no indication that this had been picked up. Certainly ds3 was unaware of how badly he'd done in his spelling tests.

BrendaBlackhead I am a teacher and I am Miss Read!

The peer marking is a really bad idea.

I know children who make mistakes just copying a word into their book from a sheet in front of them (year 2 children in top set phonics class).

Giving out wrong spellings to learn is lunacy.

Marking grammar as incorrect when it is correct is really bad form.

I know of some Primary teachers who have taken more than 3 attempts at the literacy test as part of their degree. I think they should get no more than 2 tries.

Peer marking is an attempt to help all levels recognise errors. They find it hard to see their own mistakes but should find it easier to see the error that they have not written.

Sadly most students toss this off as a waste of time or (like their parents) they refuse to 'do the teacher's work for them'. It doesn't matter how often the point of the exercise is explained, they don't all do it properly. So it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

Having said that, this tactic (a small part of Assessment for Learning) is often really badly used by teachers. So maybe it isn't surprising it gets shite results.

I use it with 16-19 year olds... or I try to. They often point blank refuse, citing my laziness as a reason! What they really mean, when I talk to them more, is that a) they lack confidence in their own understanding b) they don't want to upset their peers c) they don't want anyone else seeing their work

All of which is a sad endictment of what comes before!

www.nicurriculum.org.uk/docs/assessment_for_learning/training/afl-guidance-ks12.pdf

Virginia how is 'recognize' a preference? It's wrong, in UK English. It's correct in US English. It's not just a case of what you fancy, surely?

I mean, I know that language evolves but...can we just adapt spellings if we fancy it then?

You may start off being able to spell but if you have my DD2 for a year in your class and mark her fantastical spelling regularly your SpaG may not survive intact.

Also think writing on a smart board in front of a class with perfect spelling is an art only few (not me) can master and so I take my hat off to all teachers and never allow my DC to challenge them for occasional lapses, but rather explain them privately.

I approve of peer review as DD is much better at identifying other's errors.

I approve of referring DD to the dictionary.

I approve of a generic comment that DD needs to pay more attention to her spelling with a few illustrative corrections.

DD's imaginative spelling is part and parcel of her imaginative storytelling and I would have hated for her to have been stifled into using the very limited key vocabulary she could spell when younger.

I also think it does not do to get too hung up on English / US spelling in our fluid international age. Await the time when essays are populated with emojis and text slang (actual txtspk is obsolete now apparently).

Most irritating teacher mistakes include getting the apostrophe in the wrong place on the signs for 'parent's evening' and a teacher who persisted in saying 'Let me see what you've wrote' all year. I can cope with occasional whiteboard spelling errors.

I can understand some errors creeping in to reports and I try not to get too picky.

But when the teacher praises my child for their literacy work by writing 'Good openning!' in their books, not once but twice, my massive eye-roll could be seen from space.

"Teachers I know only highlight 3 spellings per piece of work as it would be too disheartening to see it covered in corrections."

^But if it's wrong, it's wrong and should be corrected! How are children supposed to know that they have made the error otherwise? That policy is madness. Good grief! Are children really so delicate nowadays that they can't accept more than 3 corrections?

Grammar too. Not just teachers, TA and helpers too. Also anyone who tells a child to say pardon instead of what should not be allowed to work with children.