to expect correct spellings from adults teaching my 4 yr old in reception?

[ellasmum1]

I am by no means the best speller in the world, but my dd age 4.6 came home from reception class on friday with a picture she had drawn and an adult had written "I like fairys" underneath it.
I doubted myself and checked the dictionary but it should definately be "fairies".
I do not know if the adult concerned was the teacher or teaching assistant but I feel quite worried about this. What, if anything would you do?

dd's teacher last year - fresh out of college - impeccable spelling and grammar

ds's teacher - had her year before last and has her again this year - years under her belt - always writes "alot"

The TA at dd1's school today wrote 'and much more to!' after a brief outline of the day's activities on the whiteboard outside the class, so I very discreetly mentioned it should be 'too' and she told me outright I was wrong!!!

I decided to ignore her next sentence completely after it included the word 'asmtha'

Ds1's Year 1 class made of display of Sunflowers a la Vincent Van Gough. I was outvoted for my suggestion that the class end of year present should include a coffee table book of paintngs by Van Gogh.

I would definitely draw the line at having my child attempting to learn an incorrect spelling (which thankfully hasn't happened yet).

And as I'm a total snob I am more concerned about the accent that my children might pick up from TAs than the spelling (which is more easily corrected). I don't know what South Londoners have got against the letter "t".

I'll never forget the school fete I attended which advised on a large poster that tea and cakes would be available in the DINNING HALL. Quite.

My DS (16months) is at nursery part time and I'm horrified when I see things like 'brockily' 'lasange' and 'rasins' written down in the what he has eaten section...I want to get a red pen and correct it all....but not quite brave enough.....

DH thinks I'm being OTT but I think they should at least be able to spell what they are feeding my child!

No you are not being unreasonable. I would expect any teacher of school age children (no matter what their age) to have a good grasp of their own language. I am not a fan of the "one page ahead of the pupils" school of teaching.

Agree wholeheartedly with hotcrossbunny.

This, IMHO, is the end result of the policy of not correcting spelling mistakes if they are nott specific to the subject being taught and generally having the attitude that punctuation is a higher level skill rather than something that should be grasped as a basic.

We are reaping what has been sown by teachers in the past and I for one will continue to request a handwritten covering letter when inviting applications or CV's to be submitted for a vacant post. This way I can split the pile into 3 parts...

...those who can't spell/punctuate but know how to use spellcheck for computer generated documents

...those who can't spell/punctuate but either don't know it or just think it isn't important.

...those who can spell/punctuate or who can't but are astute enough to run a computerised version of their handwritten letter through a spellchecker before writing it out.

Guess which ones are most likely to get an interview ? ....and now tell me that spelling and punctuation are not important.

A lot of people can't spell or punctuate properly - even, as wordsmith says, a lot of professional writers. And everyone can slip up. So although I'm a pedant I I expect most nursery and primary teachers to make mistakes like that and I don't say anything (so far!). Though I don't see why you shouldn't point the mistake out to your child though and explain what the right way is.

I was the child at school who corrected the teacher's mistakes (it's not a new thing - I remember the teacher writing "mammouth" at primary school 30 years ago) and it wasn't a good idea. I never ever had one say "thank you, that was a mistake, sorry let's correct it" or anything of similarly good grace. They would just go red and fume and think their authority had been undermined.

I also remember asking the teacher in puzzlement why we were given the list of words for a spelling test to learn, the day before the test. If we had already seen the words, I reasoned, we would know how to spell them so it was easy to get 10/10, so in what way was it a test? Teacher laughed his head off.

Actually though I'm liking "brockily"... think I might use it from now on.

Ooh - don't know how i did that weird box.

I have only read OP, but when I was a child my mother went slightly ballistic at the teacher for only marking 1/2 of my spelling mistakes, the teacher told my mother it was discouraging for a child to see a page full of corrections, but as my mother explained, every time I spelt a word that wasn't corrected I would believe it was spelt right, so surely it was more confusing.
I would try speaking to the teacher/assistant.

I would have mentioned something to the teacher, bad spelling really grates on me, particularly when coming from an institution where it should be important. I'd have taken for granted it was the TA and gently pointed it out to the teacher, perhaps making a joke of it.

Funnily enough, it always seems to be the native English speakers who have the most problems with the English language. I used to teach EFL many years ago and most of the foreign students actually spelt things correctly. My mum is foreign and when she did a typing course in the 80s she was the only one in her class who could spell and write coherent, grammatically correct sentences.

I understand that English is difficult insofar as it's not a phonetic language etc. but the fact that people whose native language is phonetic are nonetheless able to write correct English suggests that a lot of the spelling problems we have nowadays are down to laziness/lack of effort.

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My dad used to say, "Every teacher is a teacher of English." I'm inclined to agree, and I find spelling/punctuation mistakes in teachers' letters and in DD and DS's record books to be very annoying.

In DD's Y2 classroom last year there was a professionally-produced board up, proudly titled "WHO'S Birthday Is It?" I think I posted here about it.

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I like bockily, chip's and meet, then somethink sweet for desert. Ha ha ha

ummm
spellings aren't routinely corrected at this age, if they were, their 'independent writing' would be slashed all over the place with corrections. and if that were the case, we'd get lots of posts here moaning about just that.

well done to your daughter for trying to spell a difficult word for a 4 year old

I can't believe that I am the only one who thinks this

I have the same niggles about my DD's primary school but realised that sometimes the comments are written by an older child.If it were the teacher or TA I do not think it is unreasonable to raise the subject at the Parent-Teacher evening. I would probably not make a separate issue of it-though I am a self-confessed pedant about spelling and punctuation-my bete noir being less/fewer than.

Ellasmum1-you spelled "definitely" wrong!

Recently emailed the BBC graphics department about a stray apostrophe which had appeared in a caption to a news report. They didn't reply.

So of course it is important, and I would - and have - mentioned such things to teachers when they occur. Keep it light-hearted and it shouldn't cause a problem.

so, are there no parents out there who don't have a problem with this? dd's reading folder is full of stories that she has written herself with a few creative spellings that were left uncorrected by the teacher. at this age, it really isn't a problem and I'd be surprised at the posters who say they would go into the school.....actually say something to the teacher.
jeez