Correcting Teaching Assistant's grammar and spelling

[UpSheGoesJosephine]

If you were a TA in a primary school, would you be comfortable correcting a fellow TA if they spelt something incorrectly or used bad grammar. Such as, 'I done this' or pacific instead of specific.

Oh god I remember my first day in a class room training as a TA and I had to correct the class teachers spelling and grammar at break time. I couldn’t let it pass, he used manors for manners, didn’t capitalise his I’s and put an exclamation mark at the end of every sentence. Made my teeth itch but all of a sudden the following day his many mistakes reduced right down so I think it was honestly pure laziness.

It would sound a lot better coming from their line manager. Can't you quietly mention it to them, whoever that is?

Sadly its not unusual though, I once worked in a year 2 class as a volunteer and the teacher who was also the Assistant Head genuinely couldn't piece a sentence together, she once said Johnny, do you need to go toilet? 🤦

😧

But as a precious poster said it is inrained in people and of the staff themselves were brought up to speak incorrectly, they might struggle to suddenly speak the correct grammatical way. My husband looks at me like l am mad if l ever pull him up on something he has said incorrectly(which l don't do very often cos like you say he's not a teacher - came from a very deprived background himself) - it's a talking point as l want our daughter to know the "right" way but he was brought up to speak the way he speaks- same as l was (and my dad was a teacher of languages!!)

The needs of pupils must come first. Correct English is part of the curriculum and tested in year 6. Mistakes need to be rectified.

But regional accent and dialect won’t account for writing: “I done” as opposed to “I have done/I did”.

Or pacific instead of specific.

That’s not a regional thing its poor English.

I don’t work in a school and I would find this diplomatically difficult but I don’t think you can just ignore it. You’re actively teaching children incorrect grammar.

I have a primary school teacher friend who says "casted" instead of "cast". E.g. an Instagram post along the lines of "Henry Cavill was casted as the new James Bond".

I have noticed this one more and more on social media in recent years, and any time someone corrects the poster in the comments they get told off for being unkind / insensitive / classist, or its suggested that maybe that person has dyslexia and it's not their fault. I agree it should be done with grace (there's no need to be rude, ever) but we do have to uphold some standards, and if everyone is too scared to say "sorry I think you've got that wrong" then children are going to learn incorrect English from the get go. Most people want to get it right where they can, don't they?

Something else I've heard a LOT is "please may you...", and I remember reading somewhere - might even have been Mumsnet - that some children are being taught this at school now (yikes).

I'd like to think I'd find a polite way of correcting someone if they said something like this in front of me. I think we collectively need to learn to be a bit kinder with each other and a bit more thick skinned in ourselves!

I wouldn't equate a C in English with being educated.

Yes, that's why it needs consistent practice. A one-off correction does nothing, so don't bother with that. But spending a full week consistently practising and being aware of a phrase or word to 'correct' and the whole school focusing on it all week (or term actually) will do wonders.

Actors get lessons to learn accents and enunciation - it is possible to change language but not with one-off, on-the-spot corrections. It needs a holistic approach.

Yes they really do. One of my colleagues says it a lot and uses it a lot when writing emails. She also says we was. Been corrected loads of times but it just doesn’t sink in

I moved my daughter to a different school, and explained to the Head that this was the final straw after nearly two years with the same dreadful class teacher.

Oh jeez!!! I despair!

Teachers/TAs unable to teach SPAG correctly need performance management. It's unacceptable for children to be taught by staff who need educating themselves.

How highly educated do you expect people to be for a job earning barely above minimum wage? In reality many are more highly educated than they need to be for the job including teachers who want a less stressful job (even though with TAs covering classes it isn't necessarily less stressful).

I’d absolutely tell them discreetly.

And you’re basing that wildly inaccurate assumption on what, exactly?

Yes I would. Hopefully done kindly but we can't have teachers and TAs misinforming pupils . If somebody works in an educational establishment, you would hope they would understand the importance of this.

Yes Ive noticed that people say 'weighted' instead of weighed.

@UpSheGoesJosephine you missed a question mark.

Posting an a forum does not have the same gravity. Posters post quick and are not guiding children how to spell or punctuate. School staff will do a lot of things in their free time that they wouldn’t do when in school.

A former boss of mine used to say it. We could never work out if he thought it was pronounced that way or if it started as a joke and he got stuck in the habit.

He was a bloody genius (first in law from a good uni, and a masters, and won some sort of award when he did his solicitor's exams), so it definitely wasn't to do with being thick.

He also used to say "tan genital" instead of tangential, which used to crack me up. It gave me a mental image of a man sunbathing with his cock out.