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 actually think this is a really interesting question!

I always assumed that all spellings would be corrected, but not every incorrect spelling would need to be written out by the pupil. I also assumed that this would only be the case for English, with other subjects focussing on more specific subject-related learning.

I do struggle a bit with the idea of just ignoring incorrect spellings in an English lesson, partly because of the message it gives off. I’ve heard more than one pupil say that it doesn’t matter as their teacher doesn’t care. I think good spelling and grammar matters, and it will help our children enormously if they can become as proficient as possible. I think that emphasising the importance of SPAG isn’t a bad thing, but that would mean highlighting all mistakes.

However, I don’t think the child copying out the correct spelling is a useful tactic, especially not when there are multiple corrections.

Both my DC are autistic and my DS wouldn’t write words that he wasn’t absolutely sure of because he was so scared of making a mistake. So I completely understand why having a page full of corrections could be counterproductive for some children but I’m not sure that ignoring incorrect spellings is helpful either?

I don’t really know the answer. Correcting spellings without further comment in one colour pen, and leaving feedback on the actual work in another colour? So no comment on the spellings but praise for the work eg “great use of adjectives Johnny”.

Ideally, teachers would be able to create personalised spelling lists weekly, based on the English work completed. However with a class of 30 and an enormous admin burden, that’s not really feasible.

I discovered that the easiest way to learn vocabulary and spelling was from repeated exposure and simple reading. Eventually it just sticks when you see it time and time again. Correcting spellings exposes the child to the right way to spell the word, but maybe there could be less emphasis on it being wrong? Maybe just a correction without comment, and then focus on the actual content? I don’t know though really, would be interested in other ideas.

OP, the teacher is trained in pedagogy like what will make the most effective difference to the students. If you want to know their reasoning then ask. It'll be because it's demoralising and they are more likely to focus on learning the spelling of there are 3 than if there are more. It's also possible that the teacher usually takes a more case by case approach but this is more straightforward to explain to someone else.

I'm not sure you should be expected to work work, fyi. You might want to check with your union.

It really depends on the student. For children who struggle, they might have written every second word wrong and underlining them all and getting them to copy them out is a) disheartening and b) pointless. There's no way they'll remember 23 different spellings just because they copied them out 3 times each. For these children I would pick and choose the words I get them to copy out. If they can't spell simple, common words like 'the' and 'you', then that's what I'll get them to focus on. If they've tried to spell a word like 'indestructible', I'm not going to ask them to write this one out as they will absolutely not remember it next time, plus they're probably not going to be using this word very often. For those who say the child will think that their incorrect spelling is fine, there's a good chance it will be picked up somewhere else down the line, so although it might not be corrected one day, it will be picked up another time.
For stronger spellers/writers, I'll pick out more words and will sometimes get them to check their own spelling using a dictionary, rather than me feed it to them. This tends to be more effective for helping them to remember the spelling as well. I don't think a blanket rule for all children necessarily works that well but I can see why a teacher would ask a TA to do the same thing for all books rather than ask them to do different things for different children based on their abilities, which the TA might not be quite as familiar with.

Cross post (different times but it took me ages to write that in between getting ready / breakfast etc 😅) but you've explained it much more succinctly than me!

At primary level, the content is more important than the spelling, although spelling isn't unimportant of course. We want the children to use ambitious and appropriate vocabulary, not stick only to things they're sure they can spell correctly.

Children see the amount of corrections on a page and internalise that. You could tell them it's prize winning quality, the best you've ever read in your life and they won't believe you because you've corrected seven spellings. And next time they'll play it safe and write something boring and lacking in sparkle but be super proud of that because they didn't get any spelling corrections.

Our school's policy is that they correct any spelling that a child is expected to know based on their learning so far. Having a set number of corrections is just ridiculous IMO.

It’s totally pointless with a lot of students anyway. Many children with dyslexia for instance could write words out 100 times and not remember them.

The teachers might as well have written “your spelling is shit!” on my work and been done with it.

And for people asking "how do they learn to spell if you don't correct it"- they learn because the next time different words will be picked to practice. If it gets overlooked in one piece, it will be picked up in another. The teacher picks the words to correct based on past mistakes, how commonly used the word is (either in general or by that particular child) and other factors. They're not just blindly picking a random 3 with no thought on how to progress the child's spelling ability.

Correcting spelling either works or it doesn't, so the quantity is irrelevant. Either it does work, in which case each time the child will now know how to spell those 3 words and can move on to a new 3 each time and steadily improve. Or it doesn't work and they keep repeating their mistakes, so it makes no difference if you correct 3 or 33.

Also, the children aren’t generally stupid. You explain that the policy is to get three spellings to practise, but that it doesn’t necessarily mean they only made three mistakes. They aren’t walking around thinking they’re spelling champs and the only mistakes are the ones pointed out.

It's harder for the teachers to pick out the top 3 incorrect spellings, than it is for them to underline them all.

It's better for students to have manageable improvements.

I'm really surprised at the way spelling is apparently not taught.
I think tailoring learning to the child is a good idea, but I don't for one second believe that teachers will remember what each individual child focused on spelling correctly last week in their work and what words they need to focus on the following week. As many have pointed out, they are very busy.
I think those who are very able will be fine, and those who really struggle will be supported, but it's those in the middle who may slip through the cracks. They could be better at spelling and literacy if they were properly supported to improve on their learning, but instead, they won't be as good as they could be because of the selective marking methods used.
Those pointing out that it doesn't matter in primary school, at what point does it matter, and when will children be taught?

You say they're not just blindly picking which spellings to correct, but OPs post seems to indicate that's exactly what she's been asked to do. Or at least, she doesn't mention any particular methodology the teacher has told her to follow, only that she should correct 3.

At my children’s school they correct what has been taught already, but they don’t correct attempts at words that they have heard and never seen -- you don’t want to put them off trying.
The teachers have a degree in this stuff and I would suggest trusting them a little more.
I don’t believe that they marked all errors in the past either. It’s just that when we were children, we couldn’t see all the other uncorrected errors. Now we can.
Bear in mind that the many people who don’t know the difference between there and their and post a chester draws for sale went to school in this mythical past when all errors were corrected -- either they weren’t all corrected, or they were but this doesn’t work.

@Coolblur why don't your believe that teachers are capable of remembering (or going back and looking at!) their pupil's past work to decide what to work on with them this time? It's literally our job and the number one thing any teacher is assessed on- progress for individual children! You're essentially saying we're "too busy" to do our marking correctly (as thinking about previous work is a part of the marking process).

Well if that’s true then the school or teacher are not doing things properly and should be training their TAs better. Either that or it’s possible OP was so focused on thinking “this policy is stupid” that she didn’t listen to or understand the actual training she was given.

Yes, I think highly able children can be pushed to be more careful with spelling.

For the less able, I'd just want them to feel uninhibited about writing and as you say, just to focus on 2 or 3 spellings.

(But...while you're at it...please could you drill into them all to put a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence and a full stop at the end? With the secondary students I used to teach, some still failed to do this even in Y12 and 13! I get that many children will never really grasp the grammatical requirements of a sentence (finite verb etc) but they could just top and tail it with these markers!)

It's quite annoying as a parent to see these not picked up, those spelling errors become habits and are quite difficult to correct later on. Try to explain to your child that their spelling us glaringly incorrect (and this comes from someone with English as a second language) when teachers ignored it? It makes any text look sloppy, regardless of the content.

This is a strategy used specifically for students with spld as they would sometimes have a full page of corrections which may demotivate them.

I am not 'teacher bashing' if that's what you think.The reason for my thinking this is constantly reading on MN and hearing from teacher friends in real life about the insane workload expectations of teachers. I don't think teachers are incapable of monitoring and progressing individual pupils learning, but I believe their workload is such that it's impossible to give this the time and attention required while achieving the myriad of other tasks expected of them. I wonder if what the OP was told is symptomatic of that, and if it's a genuine marking policy, is it used as intended?
My worry is that some average students may never realise their potential because they will make some progress, and that's enough 'proof' for the school that targets are being met.

This is interesting because I was going to say the opposite. I’m an accountant in a training firm and by far the most common errors our juniors make are “silly mistakes” - basic calculations, transposition errors, and yes, spelling errors. Contrary to most of this thread, this is actually a big deal and costs our clients money, and ultimately can lead to the juniors failing their exams and getting booted off the graduate scheme. So I really feel there is an element of this kind of “oh it doesn’t matter” attitude preparing them very poorly for the world of work.

I do understand the motivation point - why not have incorrectly spelled words written correctly at the back of the book / on a separate piece of paper to be practiced later? On the actual work they could be underlined, just like an online spell check.

People calling this lazy don't understand how to teach writing. It's far more complex than what the average person can notice by skimming through.

Saying ALL errors must be corrected is ridiculous. Unless a child can produce a perfect piece of writing (for purpose and audience, with interesting reasons arguments and ideas, accurate and sophisticated sentence structures and paragraphing, aptly chosen devices, precise vocabulary, a whole range of punctuation and clear agreement, before even thinking about spelling), they're always going to have things to work on. But acting on a few at a time makes far more sense than just telling them it's all wrong.

I worked in a similar profession, and I was much less tolerant of slips in the workplace for the reasons you say. Likewise, if I was assessing something in a project rather than an exam I'd be penalising calculation errors more harshly as there is scope to check them.

However, in an exam I might be checking that they can use a method that takes a couple of pages of algebra and calculus to work through. Most of the marks will go for the actual method, and then a fair chunk for the calculus. The typing of the numbers into the calculator will only get a tiny fraction because it's not what I'm testing.

Likewise, it's not realistic to expect primary aged DC to pay equal attention to all aspects of their writing every time. So if they're writing a short story based on life in medieval times (sorry, no idea what older primary aged DC do in school!), the teacher will be interested in the story structure and whether they have accurately taken the historical info taught in the lessons and used it in the story. That's all much higher order skill stuff than spelling. Which yes, is important, but the teacher doesn't want them getting fixated on the spellings and losing all the other good stuff that's actually harder to do. If every piece of work they get back is covered in spelling corrections, they get the message that spelling counts above all and then that's what they'll focus on.

It is 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 are things on which I was raised strictly on and something I am strict about with my own ^ missing word?. I would be very unhappy to hear the teacher was being “soft” on this, *Comma splice. Use a full stop and start a new sentence *I certainly am not.

Well done, Emerald 88. A good try!

WWW: You've worked very hard to show you can use a semi-colon and have tried out some advanced word choices to give your opinion.

EBI: You need to take much more care forming sentences and using basic punctuation accurately.

Quite. The thinking on this has moved on since most posters were at school. People seem to assume that persistent and thorough correction cures inaccurate spelling, but it simply doesn't. A piece of work that's a sea of little corrections just washes over kids. I teach languages at secondary school and do generally correct all mistakes, out of habit really. But I can correct and re-correct the same mistakes over and over again and they still get the same ones wrong!

I'm amazed to hear that teachers correct any spelling errors nowadays, given the dreadfully low standard of written English I see every day, not just on SM etc but in books, newspapers and so on, where it is someone's paid job.

Precisely this.

Teaching spelling and how to write are not the same thing at all.

Our school sends spelling lists home with the kids every week, and of course these should be entirely correct.

When a kid is learning how to write though - how to present ideas and concepts through written language, the focus is not on whether every word is spelt correctly. It's important that the child does know that they are making mistakes, but the focus is not on the spelling and so pointing out every single issue is completely counter-productive to what is actually being taught.