How much spell check is too much?

[Emila]

I'm a TA in a primary school. I work in years 3-6, depending on where I'm needed.
When I was at school, teachers would correct spelling mistakes in your English work. The word would be underlined and it would then be written out correctly by the teacher in the back of your book for you to copy three times

However, when I was marking today, the class teacher told me to only correct 2-3 spellings per page and leave the rest. Obviously for the lower ability children this makes sense as we're more interested in having them actually form sentences and spell phonetically. However I was marking the book of one of the highest ability students in the class. They had about 6 spelling mistakes that really should have been picked up on.

I wonder what message this sends to students if they write a word and it isn't corrected, surely they'd think they've spelt it correctly?
What is the reasoning behind limiting the spelling corrections?

I would always want a teacher to correct bad spelling, grammar,or punctuation. It does still matter.

Jeez, correct every spelling error otherwise what’s the point. Lazy teaching.

I’m an English teacher and I do it on a case by case basis. If it’s a student who really struggles and would get upset I do around 3.

Our English department policy is three spelling corrections per page (with the three spellings being written out correctly x3 by the student). More is demoralising - it’s not lazy teaching!

It is absolutely sole destroying to have sonething you have worked really hard on ripped to shreds by a teacher, not because the content is poor but because you have dyslexia (or any other learning divergance) that makes the spelling hard.
Spelling tests are the chance to destroy confidence. Please mark the content the rest of the time (with some corrections).

Yes, it still hurts 30 years on. Thank fcuk for computer spell checks.

Copying out words does not teach you how to spell. As PPs have said too many corrections are demoralising and destroy creativity. It also depends if they are words you would expect that child to know at that key stage/year.

Your school will have a marking policy. Follow it.

If you're the teacher's assistant I'd just do what they ask. They're the ones who have done all the training and been appointed teacher of the class. If you don't trust/like their strategy find another teacher to assist

Yes perhaps ask about it when you go for your next interview if you apply for a similar role in future

It'd be pretty soul destroying as a kid (and they're quite young still) to have something returned with 10s of words underlined per page. Adults find it hard when a written piece has lots of corrections / suggestions! It'd also be daunting to see red everywhere and a child wouldn't take it all in. Focusing on a few is probably better, hence the policy. Also, if it's 3 per page, surely on the second page you could ignore ones already mentioned and focus on ones not already picked up? Or focus on the most important.

My DC is younger, but we were told they correct what they would be expected to know, but not anything else. So, example, if they write "My frend liks chocklit", they'd only correct likes as the others have been sounded out and they wouldn't know the proper spelling yet.

Presumably it's similar reasoning.

Spelling is only one part of a piece of writing, and covering it in corrections would distract from other aspects.

FFS.

No wonder so many people can't spell.

Times change. The way things were marked in the past did nothing to improve spelling - plenty of people were illiterate despite the heavy use of the red pen.

As if it is 'lazy teaching' - teachers had less to do in the past, as standards for everything are higher now and the paperwork far more demanding.

For the same reasons you give OP, I think it's ridiculous that you are being told not to correct them! Jeez. If you have to compromise, then I still say you should correct ALL of the mistakes, but fair enough only get them to rewrite 3 of them.

Everyone makes mistakes when they're learning, but if those mistakes aren't pointed out to them, how will they learn from them?

I learned from my Dad's reactions that it wasn't safe to make mistakes, and so still struggle with feeling awful about making any, but I don't think it helps to develop the appropriate resilience in children to ignore spelling mistakes.

I can't believe this is the norm?! How do they learn if they believe the wrong spelling is right?

Personally, I’d rather my children had all errors pointed out so they have the opportunity to correct. They are learning - isn’t it better to frame it in this way rather than ignore errors?

I agree my daughters have always been bad at spelling and art last part of that is because whenever I corrected it in their homework, they said the teacher wasn't bothered.

Depends on the focus of the lesson, I taught science at secondary, the school policy was correct three spelling and each department focussed on the specialist language for their subject. Spelling tests you correct every spelling because that's the focus. Teaching a lesson on heat transfer your primary focus is on 'conduction', 'convection', 'radiation', 'particles' and 'transfer'.

Students get upset both by a sea of red/green/purple (whatever your marking colour is) over their work especially if they have taken time with presentation and the teacher scrawls over the page as well as every imperfection being picked up on. There isn't enough time to deal with every fault and it takes value away from the lessons focus, I'm more interested in whether they understood the concept than whether they spelt inconsequential words correctly.

If my youngest had every spelling corrected, his page would be full of green/purple, whatever colour is used, because his spelling is poor. He writes absolutely beautifully however, with amazing vocabulary. What purpose would there be for correcting every one of his mistakes? His spelling is phonetically plausible, he just struggles (but is not dyslexic). He’ll likely always struggle with spelling to an extent. I’d rather he understood that he is great at writing (and have spell check help him in the future) than be disheartened by a sea of corrections on his otherwise wonderful work.

How many excellent future writers would we discourage by doing this?

Do they do the same with other subjects? Correct three maths mistakes and leave the rest. Correct three historical errors and leave the rest, because it's demoralising to be wrong.

How do children learn if no one corrects them?

I think when I was at school we had two types of writing- creative when only a few errors in spelling and grammar were corrected. Ideas were given on structuring a story, using adjectives to make it interesting or how to write a news article.
The rest was fully corrected. However im still rubbish at spelling because they just did loads of creative work not the formal stuff.

Maths is entirely different. There is a right or wrong answer. With writing, you can be an excellent writer whilst having poor spelling. You can’t be an excellent mathematician if you aren’t able to calculate correctly.

Completely counterproductive to only correct some of the spellings; this implies that the others must be correct even if they’re not. Spelling and grammar is something I was raised strictly on and something I am strict about with my own. I would be very unhappy to hear the teacher was being “soft” on this, I certainly am not.