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 have 2 children who are very bright, rank above average etc. However their spelling is appalling and when we go to see the books at school I often notice things that haven't been corrected. I work in a role where attention to detail especially with spelling is vital. I can understand we don't want to dishearten kids but this method is not working.

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.

But surely that's demoralising? If children have loads of corrections through their work, they may lose confidence.

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.

Children's mistakes should be corrected so that they can learn. If they don't know that they're spelling something wrong, they can't learn the correct spelling.

This to me is unadulterated dumbing down of a child's education.

This reminds me of the first parents' evening my mom attended in the UK - her and the teacher were not ready for each other 🤣🤣.

Three has been the guideline for at least 20 years, as that's what my mom was told then. Anything more than that apparently damages a child's self-esteem.

I'd think terrible spelling is worse, but 🤷🏾‍♀️.

Exactly and it will be more damaging when a few weeks later they're still making the same spelling mistake and wondering why it's been 'right' for weeks and is now being marked as wrong. Surely that would make them question what else is wrong that they've not been told about?

I'm frankly astonished that this is deemed acceptable. However it shouldn't surprise me. I remember someone asking me to read her essay for a university course and I was appalled at her spelling. She wasn't dyslexic.

Now I understand that children's spelling is not being corrected lest it demoralise them.

If you are a teacher who does not correct chocklit then, when the child discovers the correct spelling a week later, they will deduce that you, the teacher, are ignorant. Not good.

It's done for the reasons already explained.

People, and kids, are not good at trying to learn multiple new concepts at the same time.

So, to teach spelling, the children will have dedicated spelling tests.

To learn how to write, the emphasis is on writing, and not spelling - although has already been stated some mistakes will be pointed out to remind the children that they do need to think about spelling as well, but it's far more important and productive to shift the emphasis on how to write well - using good descriptions, engaging language etc, and if a few words are misspelt, so what?

And, really, when was the last time you actually wrote ANYTHING without having a computer spell check for you?

Not at all.
We explain why we don't mark every single one wrong. It would be overwhelming and not motivating to get a page of red.

More so than, I think, any other profession, people have strong opinions on how teachers should be teaching. Teacher's don't just pitch up in classroom and get going. They are trained and engage in constant CPD. That training is based on real evidence of what works. You can access it if you wish. Education Endowment Foundation is a starting point.

Teaching over a year is highly structured and iterative. It's not randomly chucking information at kids and seeing what sticks. There is more monitoring in schools on how children are developing their skills and abilities than ever before. Teachers are focussed on the learning outcomes of each individual session and the development of each pupil. Just because something isn't addressed today, doesn't mean it won't be addressed next week or when it is age and milestone appropriate to do so.

I understand the reasons given, I disagree with them.

A 2023 study found that:

Standards of spelling and grammar among an entire generation of English-speaking university students are now so poor that there is "a degree of crisis" in their written use of the language
amp.theguardian.com/uk/2003/mar/01/education.highereducation

This is obviously linked to a reliance on spell checkers and lack of correction at school.

The argument put forward that correcting a pupil's work will be demoralising is ridiculous. Pupil's surely expect their work to be corrected and secondly, the results speak for themselves.

Agree about opinions on teaching. This is because everyone has spent a lot of time in school, so they think they know how it should be done.

Also people want things to be the way it was when they were young, so they are suspicious of change.

Bit more info. I was marking work in year 4 today. For one child, I chose the words 'would,' 'walking' and 'happy.'
I left out other words, such as 'eventually' and 'delicious' as they aren't used as often and were phonetically correct. I would never have a child rewrite 'eventually' instead of a high frequency word like 'would.'
I have been given guidance, which I have followed. My post was just asking why it has changed so much. As a child, I remember paying close attention to the mistakes I had made and the teacher's corrections always helped me.

Gosh this thread is infuriating enough as a parent. Poor teachers. 🙈

The reliance on spellcheckers I agree with.

The motivation point you are wrong. Imagine being the child with 20-30 words spelt incorrectly and the person next to you has 3. You'd. Feel shit about yourself. This is why many kids have maths anxiety. Because it has to be right or wrong, and kids getting it wrong get demoralised over time as they realise their peers aren't.

So what happens if that child continues writing eventually and delicious wrong?

I don't think getting them to write words correctly if they've got lots of errors but correcting like they did at my school should be done for every word. evenchily - eventually. Great attempt! For example

Out of interest, do children also feel demoralised when they see words underlined by the spell check in Microsoft word?

The reasons for this all seem obvious.

1. it would be disheartening to see lot of words marked as incorrect
2. you don’t want children to be put off using their full vocabulary to just limit themsleves to words they can spell
3. if children have made 10 errors there is no way they will learn the correct spellings of all them in the 5 mins they have to read their feedback

No, because kids don't type much! Also it's a quick in the moment fix that most of the time no one sees.

Compared to 20 underlines left in a book forever.

I was marking work today in a Y3 class.
We were copying definitions of words from the dictionary. Most of the class had spelling errors to correct!
They were supposed to be practicing dictionary skills but most of them couldn’t even copy words down correctly.

The child may well learn to spell eventually and delicious properly all by themselves as part of a general improvement in their literacy, or as they improve the spelling of their high frequency words and spell would, happy and walking correctly they will be corrected on eventually and delicious.

If a child can't spell "would" correctly, it's pointless worrying about "delicious". "Would" is much more important, and also shows them how to spell "could" and "should". Focussing on getting the basics right before worrying about the harder words is sensible, just like we don't worry about teaching division to a child who can barely add. They'll get there in time.

It is done for a variety of reasons.

1. It can be demotivating, especially for kids who struggle with spelling.

1. We don't want kids to restrict their vocabulary so that they only use the words they know. Big vs enormous for example. Especially if they're younger and it's not a "required " spelling.

1. Time. There isn't enough time to write another paragraph, use fronted adverbials, add conjunctions/extra details is, improve vocabulary or actually do the required task/show the specific skills and also write 10 spellings 3 times.

There's more, but these are the 3 main ones.

You're surely not under the impression that people actually retain most of what they are taught? You can correct children over and over again and they make the same mistakes. The majority of people who make spelling and grammar mistakes will have had those mistakes corrected by teachers. Possibly many, many times.

I’m still not convinced. If this is better for kids, shouldn’t spelling and learning in general be improving? Whereas my impression is that we have poor spelling levels and not noticeably improved writing ability?

The child may well learn to spell eventually and delicious properly all by themselves as part of a general improvement in their literacy

That is the epitome of lazy teaching. Why can't you correct 'would' and add it to their spellings but also cross out evenchily, spell it right but not add to their spellings. At least then they know they're wrong, they've had positive praise saying they made a good attempt and can see the correct spelling written down. So next time they use the word they'll at least have seen it written down and know where they went wrong last time.

Because it is totally demotivating for a child to get a page of work with red (or purple) ink all over it.
My (as it eventually turned out) dyslexic DD would have totally given up if that had been the policy at her schools.