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?

@SwingTheMonkey

Maths is entirely different. There is a right or wrong answer.

But surely it's demoralising to be corrected.

With writing, you can be an excellent writer whilst having poor spelling

You could be an excellent writer and have excellent spelling if someone corrected you. Schools teach spelling and grammar don't they?

There's a right and a wrong way to work out a sum and there's a right way to spell and children are there to learn.

But surely someone who is good at writing and wants to write needs to know spellings and grammar? Knowing it will make things easier in the long run.

Why do they? Why should my child who struggles and will likely always struggle due to their issues be put off his beautiful writing because their spelling is poor? He won’t be forced to improve because a teacher or TA corrects every one of his mistakes so what purpose does it serve?

But surely the point is to teach him? These spellings are wrong so you can practice them. You needed a comma there. If he has beautiful writing and learns to spell then maybe he can be a published author one day.

He could he a published author using spell check and a good proof reader. He has SEN. No amount of having a teacher highlight his numerous incorrect spellings (of vocabulary most wouldn’t be using at his age) on his page will change that. It doesn’t make his writing any less impressive. Unless you are unable to see past that issue.

You're very defensive.

Personally I think if something is wrong, in an educational setting in particular, then it needs to be marked as wrong.

I'm not overly bothered I was just wondering what the reasoning was for the change from when I was at school

I think you’re mistaking challenging you by using a real life example as ‘defensive’.
But as a parent a former teacher, you’re wrong. If the focus of the writing is spelling or grammar, correct it. If it isn’t, correct the spellings the child should know (and that will depend on the child) but leave the rest. Correcting absolutely everything helps no one and serves to undermine confidence.

Happy to agree to disagree

Happily, you aren’t in education!

Right?! Can't believe this is really true...

Well I am and maybe you could work on accepting that people have different opinions.

Depends on the work and the child, but for some, a page full of red underlining would be very demoralising and make them either resistant to writing anything or only use 'safe' words they can spell. For some work, having the kids write more freely and use their full range of vocabulary is more important.

Aside from the demoralising aspect there is a limit to everyone’s working memory. They are much more likely to embed correct spellings in their long term memory in small chunks. Then when these are embedded they can move on to the next small chunk.

This! Absolutely this. It always did matter.

I would not ask again I'd just correct all the spelling mistakes, that's the right and proper thing to do the teacher is lazy.
Also just because she is the teacher it doesn't mean she is always right.

Lots of huffing and puffing from people who don't seem to understand how people learn on this thread. The end goal is for learning to happen. Learning is not supported by a large amount of negative feedback delivered in one go. Learning IS supported by positive feedback and a manageable amount of next steps and things to improve.

Some children (some people) just 'get' spelling and are able to sight-learn words very quickly. They are lucky. Far more of us need help - and that help is not useful in the form of writing out individual, unconnected words. The teacher probably asked you to "just choose a few" because you don't have the knowledge to know which ones to choose, and she wanted to avoid a pointless and demoralising wall of red pen. If she were doing it herself she might notice that there are repeated errors with one particular spelling rule and she would focus on teaching that one rule which the child can then apply to all the words they will need to spell in future. Next time she'll choose something different.

Also, five different people gleefully leaping to call the teacher 'lazy'. Unsure whether to laugh or cry...

Why don't you ask the teacher you work with OP? Or someone suitable in the school?

Asking here attracts a lot of ignorant opinion (with a couple of well-informed exceptions) which isn't especially helpful, is it?

Ask the teacher?

If a primary school aged child is given ten calculations to do, then the calculations are the point of the work and any mistakes will be corrected.

If a child is given a piece of writing then the focus could be creative writing, story structure, recall of science or history facts from the lesson etc etc etc. It's very unlikely that spelling is the focus. If every single incorrect spelling is marked, including words they can't be expected to know yet, then on the corrected piece of work it will look like spelling was the focus and it will dominate all the other work the child was doing which is counterproductive.

Incidentally, I teach a mathematical subject at university and only dock very minimal marks for calculation errors - I'm not testing whether they can accurately type numbers into their calculator under time pressure, I'm testing whether they can problem solve using the techniques I've taught them in the module.

If there are 20 spelling mistakes in a piece of work, an 8 year old is not going to learn them because their teacher underlined them and asked them to write them out. It's just too much to take in. They are far more likely to remember how to spell new words if they focus on 2/3.

We all went to school. Just because the teachers in the 70s/80s/90s did things differently, doesn't mean it was right and teachers now are lazy. Teaching is driven by research and research shows that copying down x amount of spellings doesn't teach all children how to spell.

It can be soul destroying to have all apwlling errors pointed out.
Plus it stops the child from using more interesting words and makes them stuck to simpler safe words.

Though for high ability y6 who may be writing quite a lot, the 3 word limit seems low.

You need to follow the school marking, feedback or assessment policy!
They won’t have just arbitrarily decided this for no reason, their own whim or ‘laziness’. It will have been the result of a huge amount of professional discussion and decision making based around the school’s philosophies. Don’t override the teacher as some are suggesting! Speak to someone who can give you some CPD on the school policies. Some might even explain the reasons behind it (if not explained within the policy), but you really do have to follow it even if you don’t like it. There are other schools with different policies. You could look at them next text time you apply for a job. Always on schools’ websites.