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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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

260 replies

ChwatFeechers · 10/07/2015 12:49

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]

OP posts:
JeanneDeMontbaston · 11/07/2015 11:13

There are quite a few. Rule of thumb, things with ae tend to have an acceptable version that just has e. aeons/eons, for example - I think people accept both.

ChwatFeechers · 11/07/2015 11:14

I shall reiterate, it was not just the fact that spelling errors hadn't been corrected. Although the incorrect spelling of February wasn't picked up, once. I have seen spelling errors written by the teacher.
My daughter's work wasn't littered with mistakes either; she recently scored a level 5 in her SATs for Literacy, so her books wouldn't have been filled with corrections, 'crushing her'.

TheHumourlessHarpy there was nothing sanctimonious about my opening posts, therefore you mustn't have known the meaning when you accused me of being.

OP posts:
JeanneDeMontbaston · 11/07/2015 11:16

Well, I make spelling errors and I teach. It's not ideal, I suppose, but how would you like the teacher to deal with it?

Maybe you could explain that teachers are human and fallible? Because we surely are, and it'll only become more apparent.

NewFlipFlops · 11/07/2015 11:17

I am 55 and went to a primary school with 42 poor and immigrant children in every class. We were all taught accurate spelling and grammar, and four-fifths of us probably retained it.

Trust me, Jeanne, there has been a massive decline in spelling and grammar. Just as there have been massive improvements in some other areas of life.

JeanneDeMontbaston · 11/07/2015 11:20

No, I don't trust you, sorry.

Your experience is just that - one experience. So's mine, of course, but there's little point generalising from them.

What we do know is, in the UK, the population of children who are taught literacy is much higher than it was fifty years ago - there were children back then who were not sent to 'normal' schools because nothing was expected of them. And there are illiterate adults who missed out on that chance completely. It's awful.

So, when you worry about SPAG in schools now, I think it's important to keep in mind that people are at least trying to teach as many children as possible.

CharleyFarleyy · 11/07/2015 11:21

Not RTFT but my partner has just qualified and he is dyslexic so I am going to say YABU.

NewFlipFlops · 11/07/2015 11:22

Learned and learnt depend on when something happened in the past. E.g.:
I learned to drive in 2001.
I learnt a poem this morning.

They aren't alternative spellings of the same word.

NewFlipFlops · 11/07/2015 11:23

Oh, just read you don't trust me, and you're the teacher Grin

QED, thread.

JeanneDeMontbaston · 11/07/2015 11:24

I would have said 'I learned a poem this morning' is as acceptable as 'I learnt a poem this morning'. I wouldn't say 'I learnt to drive in 2001'. So I think the alternative is only acceptable one way round - but it does seem acceptable there.

JeanneDeMontbaston · 11/07/2015 11:25

Huh? Confused

Why should I trust you? We're strangers on the internet, it's not like you have remarkable powers of transforming anecdote into data.

TheOriginalSteamingNit · 11/07/2015 11:29

I'm a bit taken aback at some of these howlers, but mainly just want to post in support of the -ize is not an Americanism theme here!

NewFlipFlops · 11/07/2015 11:32

No, I do have a remarkable number of years' professional experience in fields requiring SPAG (like it) accuracy, though.

The last time I checked, "trust me" was just a phrase.

WhirlpoolGalaxyM51 · 11/07/2015 11:32

So what do you think I should I tell my DD nit? Seeing as I've asked everyone else!

JeanneDeMontbaston · 11/07/2015 11:33

Yes, of course it's just a phrase - that's why I was slightly taken aback you responded so oddly.

I'm really impressed by your remarkable number of years of professional experience, though.

TheHumourlessHarpy · 11/07/2015 11:33

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

TheOriginalSteamingNit · 11/07/2015 11:34

Probably to do the spellings the way they're listed, because not everyone agrees on this issue so safest to go with what she's given, even though really you should be consistent?

WhirlpoolGalaxyM51 · 11/07/2015 11:35

Was the teacher correct in telling the children they were wrong to spell it recognise, and marking them down. I think that's the real question. A lot of people posting saying she was right, a similar number saying not so.

Just remembered that post about teh national curriculum though.

Dunno.

Last night i told her it was "-ize" and to listen to the teacher and not mummy! As per posts on here.

WhirlpoolGalaxyM51 · 11/07/2015 11:36

Phew right. So teacher was right to mark them down, I was very wrong and what an utter fuckup that was!

Going to talk to Dh later about the whole helping her with her homework thing I just don't think it's suitable for me to do it after all this.

Also there's the "smartarse" thing what should I tell her about that? Just keep her mouth shut and ot ask questions?

NewFlipFlops · 11/07/2015 11:37

Don't be sarky, Jeanne, you'll feel the same at 55.

Trust me Grin

Pax.

JeanneDeMontbaston · 11/07/2015 11:38

I hope I won't. My mother is 61 and still hasn't become jaded - not everyone does, you know. She teaches dyslexics and has done for rather more years than you, I think.

TheOriginalSteamingNit · 11/07/2015 11:39

Harpy are you trying to make a point through your diction in the post above?
For what it's worth, I would mark 'utilized' there for substitution by the simpler 'used', and 'lexical choices' is horrible. What's wrong with 'words'? 'Implied inferences' doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and 'more so' = two words.

pinksquash13 · 11/07/2015 11:39

Correcting every spelling in a piece of work doesn't mean the children will learn them. I think only correcting 3 gives the child a more realistic chance of correcting and applying the correct spelling next time. We choose the most common words for spelling corrections so I'd probably ignore
February but teach months to whole class if it coninued to be a problem for many.

teacherwith2kids · 11/07/2015 11:43

I also think we have to appreciate how much ALL school marking has changed.

When I was a child, my writing was marked with something like a 'Well done' or 'Well tried', and with spellings corrected. None of what we would now describe as 'formative assessment' e.g. commentary on vocabulary, sentence structure, composition; no next steps.

Now, I mark every piece of writing done by a pupil against a set of specific success criteria, which they know and which they also assess themselves against. I identify, throughout the writing, where they have met each of these (e.g. use of complex sentences, or ambitious vocabulary, or modal verbs), and also where they could have done so but didn't. I then write two formative assessment comments, one substantial positive one, commenting in detail on what they have done well, based on the success criteria, 'next steps' from their last piece of work and also on longer term targets for that child. I then do the same in a 'next steps' comment, pointing out what they could have done better, and what they need to work on next time.

I do also mark their spelling mistakes - specifically mistakes in words from the spelling curriculum up to that point (e.g. common homophones), and common words that I know that specific child should be able to spell (so I mark different spellings in the work of an able speller than I do in the work of a child who struggles with spelling - the former might get an ambitious word that is wrongly spelt corrected, whereas the latter might only get common high frequency words corrected).

i am expected to do this for EVERY piece of work, overnight, for every child in a class of 32. I am also expected to mark all maths overnight (tick, cross, dot for correction, success criteria assessed and formative comment) and science / topic / RE / whatever other written work has been done that day as well.

This is VERY different from the marking of a generation ago, (and IME VERY different from secondary, where marking is relatively infrequent and MUCH less in depth). If the belief is that every spelling correction should be marked - and I agree that there is an argument for this - then the formative aspect of marking, and commentary on other aspects of the writing, would necessarily have to be reduced, simply to make the marking of 60 - 120 books per night, every night of the week, humanly possible.

NewFlipFlops · 11/07/2015 11:43

I should have taught, perhaps having longer holidays would have made me less jaded.

Unpax, since you weren't ready.

JeanneDeMontbaston · 11/07/2015 11:47

I think you probably know that's a goady comment, new.

I love 'unpax'. Very 1940s school story. It's cute. Smile