Wibu to complain to the school?

[pho3be]

I mean, come on now

please complain. Once in a letter = mistake. This many times where it is the core of what you are writing = dreadful English.

(to the pp who said it was just the YOUR, isn't thankful spelt wrong as well?)

I don't expect perfection, but to me this is pretty extreme.

The number of people who suggest marking it

How passive aggressive. It's almost like some people resent teachers correcting their children's work. Why would you act like that?

Definitely do NOT use red pen and mark it before sending it back.
That is one surefire way to make sure your justified complaint about the errors will not be taken seriously, and have you marked as apparent to watch over the next few years.

Do it in a grown up manner - face to face, to the class teacher it involves, at a quiet time without other parents and your own child around listening in, and in polite and calmly, like you would want someone to speak to you if you made a smallish error in your workplace. Because I do suspect this has been a small error - probably a download off the internet and not been checked before being used.

hula - agree on your first bit but not your second. This is not a smallish error!

OP's DD's writing is neat and meticulous so this will have taken some time: time in which no adult spotted the large error!

I have extensively googled by the way and can find this document nowhere.

Obviously google keeps autocorrecting the error!

When I say smallish - I mean not a really big issue. I am often one for saving my energy for the bigger battles that might come along. Its not worth ruining a parent/teacher/school relationship over.

I do think it is worth mentioning - but not making it into a passive aggressive nightmare as has been suggested. I still think a mature, calm and polite conversation face to face with the teacher is the better approach.

And yes - have looked on the usual teaching sites for the document but struggling as autocorrect takes over!

Because I do suspect this has been a small error

Small error? REALLY? it's pretty bad at primary level.

My eye is twitching now. That is a glaringly obvious error!

It's actually worse than my son's reading book last week where it said, "The iguana is itching it's knee"

Itching?

It's ITCHING something??????

Just. No.

More bothered by the it's

unless that's your mistake...

UpTheChime - but it depends on what has actually happened. And compared to some issues regarding schools it is fairly small ime - seriously, I have seen far worse issues that can happened between school and home.

It is pretty bad yes - but not bad enough to have some aggressive, passive or otherwise, approach to it.

OP please let us know if you complain and how it goes.

I would definitely say something as I think it is truly atrocious!

ThouShaltNotPass Sorry if I'm being dense, but what's wrong with the word 'itching'?

I think she would rather it said 'scratching'?

"The iguana is itching it's knee"

Well, there are two errors in that sentence.

"Itching" should be "scratching" (pretty illiterate usage otherwise)

It's is a contraction of "it is", not the possessive form of it (cf hers, his, ours, not her's, hi's, our's).

But so very few people seem to be able to indicate this correctly ...

This is dreadful.

One scratches an itch. Anything else is nonsense.

How difficult can the correct placing of an apostrophe be - for supposedly "educated" teachers?

The thing is, I am a teacher (although a long time out of the classroom).

I went ot school in the 70's and learnt not one line of gramar at any point.
So I have taught myself, and there are still some things i get wrong, and I know, so I check. Every single time. I have taught myself and learnt the rules for apostrophes etc.

I might have decided not to bother, BUT I was a TEACHER and needed to TEACH the children in my care. I made up things to help to remember the rules and the exceptions, because, as a teacher, it is my job to get it right.

No, it is not acceptable, as I said up thread, once, in a letter home, maybe. But like this, where it is the whole central concept of the task, no.

Poor kids, all that effort for something which ends up looking crap, reinforcing a mistake, and making parents doubt their own spelling!

I think FrancisCrawford had the best phrasing for the planner- hope you did manage to mention it!

This really is awful. I am a bit of a grammar freak and was taught badly in school in the 80s so made it my mission to make sure I now 'get it right' and want to pass that on to my own kids (whilst very aware that their teachers don't always get it right themselves!). Sometimes, genuine mistakes are made, but other times, things are just glaringly wrong..like this! I'd have to say something.

It's dereliction of duty for a teacher to send home something of that sort. Teachers shouldn't be required to do all sorts of data analysis, but should take time to correct every mistake on every piece of written work. All the red ink should encourage students to do better. Consistency is key. Peer correcting isn't practical or useful in most instances.

Yikes, it reads like it was written using a predictive text function based on the lack of punctuation in the last paragraph.

Is it the teacher's writing? Is it possible someone downloaded a Mother's Day activity from the web and didn't bother to proof read it?

(Frantically grabbing at straws here).

You should send it to Lynn Truss.

Meh. I got a RG university degree in the 90s without knowing the difference.

Oh come on op you have to complain. There are no excuses for that. I wouldn't want my child being taught by someone who could send that home.

You're doing the kids a disservice if you don't say something.

I went to school in the 1980s and 90s and didn't learn much grammar in the sense that our German teacher had to explain what the subject and object of a sentence were. But I vaguely remember learning the difference between it's and its, your and you're and their, there and they're. When I look back at my schoolwork, I had mastered this kind of thing before I left primary and it became ingrained. Also don't teachers have to do a literacy test as part of their PGCE?