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!!

In my opinion it stems from primary age. We have spellings every week in the year 1/2 class that I support and test the children once a week. Guess what? The children that get poor scores are the children whose homework/spelling books are not opened by parents all week, the same children that never complete homework.Who'd have thought it?

I agree derxa . English lessons for 5,6 and 7 year olds, many of whom can barely hold a pencil, are frustrating for teachers and children alike. Thanks Ofsted!

OMG, this is appalling. Teacher's policy? UK education being devalued by the minute. Really apalling. No one gives a toss about the kids' education any more. Everything seems to be just box ticking.

Perhaps as you are so good at grammar and spellings, you could teach your daughter these things. I doubt it has occurred to the teachers before now. I'm sure the teacher just sits there all day with a cup of tea in hand twiddling their thumbs.

Troll alert!

Bluntness Cantkeepaway said

" I'm not suggesting that every piece of work has to be marked against everything possible - that's not pfeasible, based on workload. However, if there is only time to mark against one set of success criteria in primary / early secondary, then perhaps it should be against grammar / spelling / punctuation until those are embedded and ingrained."

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 suggested 8 plus years of hammering SPaG over and above content for a very intelligent terrible speller or for a child who can spell accurately and use full stops and has pretty writing but doesn't really understand the texts they are reading beyond a superficial level, has a limited vocabulary, and doesn't understand techniques would be equally damaging.

Bluntness we mark for comprehension, reading text and understanding it, it many ways that is more important than SPaG. With the advent of IT being able to memorise spellings is less important.

In relation to reading and comprehension. The comment about Ofsted criticising a comment like "pay attention to your spelling" is that it is vague. To be useful comments have to be specific. This was explained several times by several posters.

Positive teaching and marking is absolutely successful, the idea that we can heap criticism on children and expect them to just power through is ludicrous.

People respond better to praise and positive comments, this is indisputably true. Yet posters on this thread expect us to throw all the experience and evidence from teachers away because they know better.

I went to the doctors once can I give advice to my GP?

Giddyaunt18, I have taught in primary schools for many years now and 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. Try not to judge those parents who don't open their children's books or look at spellings at home with them, you really do not know why they are not doing this. I've taught children of illiterate parents who have become fluent readers aged 5 and others who's parents try everything to help them, but fail to progress as they would wish them to.
Not everything is as black and white as you might think.

As someone else has written, a teacher needs to read a student's work in order to assess it, so must be aware of the spelling/grammar mistakes. In addition to the ticks and smilies, how much more time and effort would it take to at least make a note to the effect that there were several errors in the work? 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?

Do teachers not feel they are letting their students down by allowing them to leave school literately unequipped?

Also agree with both Dancergirl's and Glitterazi's posts - spot on.

moomin

Stop using evidence ffs.

It's annoying to see for people arguing from an entrenched but illogical position.

Yes Rorty we do teach grammar.

Yes, I feel terrible that some students leave my care without functional literacy skills. I no longer have the option of teaching either functional skills or a foundation paper in English, so those of us at the KS4 end of the spectrum have even fewer options for those children who struggle. I think that is morally reprehensible, but we are where we are.

Re not correcting every mistake, it's been outlined several times why that is a) undesirable and b) impractical

With the advent of IT being able to memorise spellings is less important.

I strongly disagree with that statement.
For one, Word and the likes do not autocorrect with the right word automatically. It is essential for the children to know how to spell words to be able to see of the autocorrect is right or not. Not having a red line underneath a word doesn't mean it's the right word or that it's spelled correctly.
Second, all exms are still done by hand writing. That means you absolutely need to be able to write correctly with the right spelling when you are writing. Not just because yu will loose marks if your spelling is awful but because it will annoy the marker and you are likely to get a lower mark, even when said marker is very careful not to let that happen. It just makes reading the text harder for example.

So no spelling hasnt become less important.

Smile does it mean you agree that SOME spelling mistakes should be highlighted then?

Because the OP (and in my experience shows the same) I stalking about a situation where NO spellings are corrected.
And the child is told that the work is excellent (not it's not, if it was excellent, there would be no spelling mistakes). Which means comments should be excellent use of . Be careful of spellings!

With the advent of IT being able to memorise spellings is less important

Nah. Not being able to spell is embarrassing. When I am teaching a lesson and writing on the board I can't be googling the spelling of every second word, can I? If I am giving a presentation at work and using the flip chart, I'm going to look a right tool if I can't spell 'low hanging fruit' aren't I?

Knowledge is important for its own sake as much as anything else.

I don't think you can just ignore the demoralisation aspect though for some children.

My DD is getting on much better at maths at secondary than she did at primary. Why? Because she is no longer being taught with good mathematicians who always finish way before her, call out answers, look at her work and say 'that's so easy'. Now she is ability set her confidence has improved no end and, alongside that, so has her attainment.

Similarly by not having every piece of English 'deep marked' (and thus covered with marks showing her poor SPaG) she is getting more confident attempting to do long bits of writing with more mature explanations as well. So she is getting praise for that. So now she is (finally) getting to the point where she can cope with having some spellings pointed out. Up until recently her brain has just not switched on to spelling but the other day she finally got full marks for a spelling test, which I don't think she ever achieved in primary despite our best efforts.

You may think I am treating her like a special snowflake. I think that different children have different needs, and it just so happens that the marking that is practical for English is helping my child not hindering her.

Do teachers not feel they are letting their students down by allowing them to leave school literately unequipped?

Yep. But that feeling doesn't generate more time. I am a teacher, not a fucking magician.

TheSmurfs you will not lose marks in a GCSE exam because poor spelling "annoys the marker". The markschemes are extremely specific about what you can award points for. Poor spelling affects your mark significantly for specific parts of specific papers. Overall, there are a small number of marks available for SPAG.

But not for annoying the market...

*marker

I am a teacher, not a fucking magician.

Charming

Yes, I do agree some SPAG should be highlighted - I know the OP said there were none, but i think the discussion has moved away from just that example.

MrsPunani are you capable of creating time from nowhere?

MissPunani: It's true. I work as hard as I can. My colleagues work as hard as they can. If you fired every teacher in the country and hired people like you (you might need a new surname!) do you think that would make an hour into two hours? No, it fucking wouldn't.

do they even do that these days?

Nope, no one teacher spelling, we are sitting in the staff room rolling splits. Shagging in the maths stock room that's my favourite.

Ffs

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

Trifle

Has anyone complained about the long holidays yet?