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!!

My point is that sending out correctly spelt work is important. You disagree with that?

"We don't need to memorise spelling we need to be able to recognise correct spellings, a different skill." You disagree that it is important we teach students how to use the tools most find in the modern workplace?

It needs muscle memory in spelling and particularly in grammar. And we do young people a disservice if we don't try to equip them with those skills

Yes absolutely correct, but those muscle memories are now keyboard based.

When you write, you need to be able to spell accurately. You cannot depend upon anyone or anything checking your work - there isn't time.

As a fellow English teacher moomin I think you're wrong about spelling. I've heard your position a lot and I really disagree.

Obvs some people will have issues with spelling all their lives and they will use technology to manage that. It doesn't mean we stop teaching spelling and grammar properly to most children.

My children weren't taught spelling properly. It's held them back in public exams. As a parent I'm furious about this.

That said, I completely understand how spelling gets sidelined. Doesn't make it right but it's not necessarily the teachers' fault either. What's clear from this thread is that the general public have very little idea about how much control we teachers have over curriculum content and focus...

Moomin, what's your evidence base that there is no connection between handwritten and keyboard based skills when it comes to accuracy in spelling and grammar?

And actually, dismissing the need for skills linked to handwriting is also problematic, particularly for sectors where there are fast-moving negotiations, or a lot of court-based work, or in particularly sensitive fields. I have been on trips to countries where corporate policy is that we don't take any networked assets to that country with us. Handwritten work becomes very important.

I still have to pass handwritten notes to my boss relatively frequently. My prospects would not be bright if they were riddled with spelling and grammar errors.

Running I AM NOT SAYING WE SHOULD STOP TEACHING SPELLING.

A muscle memory is just that. Many people have to hold an imaginary pen to help them spell a word because they were taught using pens. You must have seen people do that. If we teach spelling as a keyboard skill this will speed up people's typing.

I am saying we should change the way we teach spelling. Parents want spelling tests and corrections - in my experience these only work for a minority of students. We can be creative in the way we teach spelling, we can ermbed it into the reality of people's lives. Or we can try to teach them a skill, handwritten spelling, that once they leave school most won't use. They will then have to adapt this skill to the reality of an IT based workplace.

An important skill is reading for detail. I have said repeatedly spelling is important. I just think we over emphasis the need for handwritten spelling. I have made no mention of not teaching grammar.

Stop reading what you think I am saying.

Moomin, you'll forgive people for thinking you don't think teaching spelling is all that important when you describe it as 'not that important' and speak of your 'distaste for the tedium that is teaching spelling'.

I'm also interested that you are focusing solely on handwritten spelling, rather than spelling as a general skill taught by a variety of methods. I think you're the only one on this thread confining the discussion of teaching SPAG and effective methods for doing so in the context of a busy curriculum to 'handwritten spelling'. Is there a reason for that?

And yes, you've said in your posts that it's important - but in the context of the long list of things you consider more important, combined with your 'disdain', it appears clear you see a hierarchy of importance and spelling (or is is it just handwritten spelling?) has a low spot in your personal pecking order.

Jassy I am frustrated as a number of posters have suggested I am saying we stop teaching spelling which is not what I am saying.

Would you rather employ someone, who was a good team player, could pull out essential facts, and could make valid inferences and then analysis them, BUT they prefered to type up their reports. Or someone who could spell brilliantly but lacked some of the other skills. We can't teach everything. I think analytical thinking is more important than spelling.

It is really, hard to teach inference and analysis because they are high level skills. I think we do this really well in the UK. And all this is brushed aside because parents want spelling emphasised.

I personally dislike teaching spelling, lots of teachers don't. I want my lessons filled with laughter and it is easier to do this teaching Shakespeare. I want my pupils to look toward to my lessons, I try my best but struggle to make spelling exciting.

I suppose my real issue is that most teachers, teach a whole range of complex skills really, really well and parents post threads implying we are doing nothing because we don't pick up every spelling error.

I have allowed myself to derail the thread as I have a particular bee in my bonnet about handwritten spelling. Apologies all.

Moomin, neither of your categories as described would even make the sift or assessment board in any of the places I've worked, I'm afraid. We need people who can cover both skill sets. The idea that most workplaces are about 'typing up reports' is very narrow indeed.

As I said, I agree with you on the need for balance and a range of taught skills, but I fundamentally disagree that IT can compensate for a weak base in spelling - and of course it absolutely can't when it comes to grammar.

I'm honestly interested in the evidence base around different forms of spelling skills and the idea that handwritten skills do not transfer to typed or oral spelling skills. Is this something you can share?

We learn to spell in a number of ways some visual, some auditory, some muscle memory. Have you ever asked a good typist how to spell something and they hold out their fingers and 'air type'? The air fingers can spell what their conscious mind is struggling with. Obviously skills can be transfered but it is easier to work the way you were taught. We are putting an unnecessary factor in the equation.

In terms of skills I don't think we realise what good thinkers we produce in this country. I often teach students from China, their maths skills are amazing and factual recall excellent. If they are set a piece of work where they have to draw their own conclusions they can panic. On more than one occasion a student has said words to the effect of "I don't know what my opinion is because you haven't told me yet".

If we spend more time on spelling we lose something else. What do you want to lose?

We learn to spell in a number of ways some visual, some auditory, some muscle memory. Have you ever asked a good typist how to spell something and they hold out their fingers and 'air type'?

I do 110 words a minute - taught at (foreign) school. Have never done that, nor seen my peers do it.

I was asking for the evidence base, please - any links to why learning spelling through writing, alongside other methods including reading, aural and typing, wasn't shown to have cumulative benefits.

I don't think you'll find anywhere I've suggested that only one method of teaching spelling should be used. Just the idea that being able to spell isn't a valuable workplace school that hasn't been displaced by IT.

Thinking skills are language, culture and knowledge dependent.

You know Jassy anything I say is going to be wrong.

"Just the idea that being able to spell isn't a valuable workplace school that hasn't been displaced by IT."
This is a total misinterpretation of what I have said. I have reiterated many times that spelling needs to be taught. I just value other skills more highly. Skills like reading for detail and responding to what is actually said rather than what you assume people are saying.

FYI - teaching that benefits dyslexics is usually beneficial to all. This isn't an academic reference but the content is correct.

"For many young dyslexic students, touch typing helps cement other skills like reading, spelling and vocabulary to memory. Students who learn touch typing at an early age do better on tests that involve these skills and this holds true for both dyslexic students and those who are not.
Typing offers a new way for dyslexic students to learn. Muscle memory allows spelling to become a series of patterns on the keyboard making it much harder to inadvertently misspell or transpose words.
Handwriting is a particularly challenging skill for dyslexics. That’s because mistakes take longer to correct, papers often end up messy with eraser marks or cross-outs and students lack the benefit of using a spell checker. Even for people who do not suffer from dyslexia, touch typing is an easier, faster and more efficient way of getting work done."

www.typingtest.com/blog/the-zen-of-touch-typing-for-dyslexics/

mmm I think that saying we create great thinkers At the expense of spelling in the UK is not really an example of great thinking .

If a student can't spell or punctuate properly, they are extremely limited in how they can communicate their great thoughts effectively. I think that we also produce a lot of students who think that they know much more than they do in practice and who dismiss sentence demarcation, capitalisation, paragraphing in the hurry to reel off their brilliant ideas. It's often difficult to work with these students precisely because they want feedback on so-called higher order skills when what they really need to improve are much more mundane and functional skills.

Although there may be many ways to teach spellings, I think that the problem is that there are a lot of frustrated parents whose children can't spell and who don't think it matters. When we have whole swathes of perfectly average twelve and thirteen year old who struggle to remember -tion or -ough suffixes, it's wrong to say there isn't a problem.

Especially if they've managed to teach it to Chinese kids in China!!!!

This book "Brilliant ideas for using ICT in the inclusive classroom" discusses some of the ideas I have mentioned. It also suggests using ICT has great benefits for SEN learners.

Traditional spelling methods often focus on teaching bright, neurotypical students. I like to be more inclusive.

Chinese students are often good spellers in English. However, to accommodate the teaching of spelling that have little experience of speaking English. We have students who are working on A level maths problems who can write well in English but who can't communicate orally at all.

Thinking skills are culturally dependent, that is my point. The English education system does this well.

moomin it's not a personal attack. I don't think anyone has an issue with the idea that dyslexic children find it difficult to spell. It's the non-dyslexic children who are the issue and it's indefensible, unnecessary and grossly unfair on these kids that they leave primary school without these basic literacy skills in place because teachers are so hampered by absurd curriculum requirements that they do not have the time or energy to prioritise the basics.

Why aren't teachers shouting it from the rooftops? Why do we defend this crap? We haven't created it!

Running no arguments from me on that.

Well I have a utopian vision where English kids can both spell and speak English well. You may say I'm a dreamer but I'm not the only one...

That's not my point.

When English teachers ask French students to think, they quickly conclude that French students aren't taught to think properly. It's a lazy assumption. French students are taught to think very well indeed but in a quite different way to English students. If you address English students the way a French teacher addresses French students you will be frustrated too.

It's called culture!

moomin It's very frustrating isn't it? Especially when you deal with it every day. And I'm not advocating the Chinese system either!!!!

My DD (12) can spell beautifully in English, and she goes to school in French (where her spelling is not 100%). I didn't leave literacy in English up to chance and she had a tutor plus lots of one-to-one support from me, from the age of 4.5...