To expect school teachers to actually educate my child?

[ICancelledTheCheque]

Maybe I'm being a bit PFB but this has really irked me.

DD is Y7 in a big academy secondary school. She showed me some work she had done - in three paragraphs there were six spelling errors and five grammatical errors. The teacher didn't mark up a single thing and just put big green ticks and irritating smiley faces on her work and wrote "excellent work" at the end.

But it wasn't excellent work. How is she going to learn if they don't flag this stuff up? Is this the norm these days? Doesn't bode well for GCSEs if so!!

Obvs should say 'splifs' - too stoned to spell.

"although children may well remember their spellings set for that week, they barely ever remember to use them in their writing and if these tests are repeated a few weeks later, most, if not all, will be forgotten"

This is so true!

In Germany spelling tests are not single words but dictations; the children are given a list of words to learn, but then an unseen passage is dictated by the teacher which they have to write down to check they have learnt the spellings.

Every week my DC2 would learn the spellings and get them all right but get a grade 3 or 4 (C or D) for his spelling test because he'd spelt other words wrong! The comment always said the same thing - along the lines of "what a shame that you have learnt all the spellings I set but misspelt other words"!

It was very disheartening! DC1 could somehow just spell and got top grades in her spelling tests despite generally having forgotten what the words she was meant to learn were and having left her spelling book somewhere or other...

*MissPunani

PurpleDaisies Of course not, but it is unnecessary to use profanity to express that.*

Fuck, fuck, cunt, twat ........where is that vodka?

MissPunani: Profanity? Punani?

This is a forum for adults, Punani. On that basis: shit, bugger, bollocks, twat, arse, fuck.

MissPunani

PurpleDaisies Of course not, but it is unnecessary to use profanity to express that

Am I the only one baffled by the juxtaposition of Miss Punani's username and comment?

SmileEachDay:

Clearly not (cross post) :o

PurpleDaisies Of course not, but it is unnecessary to use profanity to express that.

You're offended by the word "fuck"?

When I was training as a teacher we were instructed not to mark up every single mistake because it was too time consuming and because it was horrible for kids to see their work totally covered in red pen.

Am I the only one baffled by the juxtaposition of Miss Punani's username and comment?

I guess it would be more acceptable if teachers periodically held a lesson specifically about spelling and grammar - do they even do that these days?

I didn't get this in secondary school, I left in 1990.

My PILs talk about it though, they would face left school late '50s.

Perhaps MissPunani can spell but lacks comprehension skills.

Smile is that the only comment? You lazy tart. My mum is going to phone the school and complain.

She's a year 7, can you imagine how crap she would feel if her work was covered in red marks and errors??

Oh fine

Please try and be more ambitious in your profanities. In your next post,
explore the use of wanksplash, fucknugget and biting your thumb.

oh god oh god where are the smelling salts...............

So someone whose user name is vulgar slang for a woman's genitals is objecting to profanity! Hilarious!

5moreminutes

"Which was what prompted my comment about what a bad idea focussing only on deep marking SPaG until such a point as correct SPaG is embedded and ingrained is. "

The thing is that at the end of Primary, to reach the expected standard children must be accurate in terms of spelling, punctuation and grammar. Not being able to do one of those does push you down into Working Towards or Below the expected standard. Children must meet ALL the statements within the assessment framework to get that level - they can't (as they used to be able to) be poor at one element but still overall be judged as reaching (or even exceeding) the expected level.

So a child who has fantastic content but makes more than very occasional errors in the use of full stops or capital letters comes out as Below the expected standard, however advanced the content of their writing is. Equally, if they don't spell the words expected for Years 3,4, 5 and 6 correctly, with more than an occasional error, then they are working Towards or Below (common homophone mis-spelling puts you Below).
this
I know that this has not hit secondary yet, and so this seems as alien to them as it once did to primary teachers. However I can't believe it won't come in with time.

I really feel for teachers, with all the bureaucracy, marking schemes, changing NC, safeguarding, job insecurity, cuts, funding issues and parents special snowflake mentalities, and I'm a home educator ffs ( non crunchy however ). I occasionally let my kids out of their cage.

I teach students who have been primarily educated in other countries. Often they obsess about detail but have no analytical skills. Frequently they can not work in groups and verbal communication skills are very weak. There are terrified of making mistakes and are reluctant to stretch themselves because they fear failure and criticism.

This does not apply to all ESL students but there is a distinct pattern.
English education is far from brilliant but most teachers and schools are genuinely committed to producing rounded humans. There are a lot of strengths in the way we teach and we would do well to remember that. We could have a generation who can spell and have lovley handwriting but who can't think. Beware you might get what you want.

Anothermoomon - while there are undoubted differences in the skills that are emphasized and developed in different countries, I take issue with English people who accuse students who have been educated in other systems and languages of not knowing "how to think" and not having analytical skills. Analytical skills are strongly culture and content dependent, and that is before we even take account of language barriers. An English student's thinking skills won't work well in another country.

the smurfs of course the main errors should be highlighted, with the child maybe then looking for the error throught the text and rectifying using the teacher's feedback. It is bad that no errors were highlighted, but that doesn't mean that the child isn't being educated. To be honest, this sounds awful, but we do have to prioritise marking and less time is allocated the work that doesn't count towards coursework or exams. There is just too much marking and it would be lovely if comments were all acted upon, but they just arent and lots of valuable feedback is ignored, with kids handing in the same work again because they can't be bothered. It would be nice to have parents like the Op who want their child to do well and get them to put in effort.

Using for instead of about is not standard American relationship. I went to an Anglomanic girls' school where spelling was marked in every subject. In English and History, grammar was marked with a fine tooth comb. If several girls made similar errors, the teacher woukd lecture us on proper technique.

Most teachers will have at least 5/6 different classes a day if each class of 30 completes one written homework and one written class work and years 10/11 and 12/13 work on coursework we are talking about getting on for 300+ pieces to mark in a week. If only 10 minutes are spent marking each piece (and some will take much more) that is 3000 minutes marking as well as preparation of lessons. When?