to be annoyed that there is a display featuring "hectagons" in DD's classroom

[morningpaper]

WTF is a hectagon

FGS

Please tell me you have raised this with the teacher, MP?

If you google hectagon, after the first couple of references to 100-sided polygons you get scary amounts of stuff which actually refers to hexagons.

'Get your red pen out, I expect you will be correcting the letters home and amending the comments in the reading diary soon! '

doesn't everybody?

ooops

Peachy - some will but it depends on what other qualifications and specificaly what relevant experience an/or industry based competences they have gained. That is the same for many under graduate and postgraduate courses.

All teachers now have to pass literacy and numeracy tests. They have always had to have GCSE English and Mtahs, at C or above, but there are actually tests involved now.

Primary school training is a bit more competitive now as there are more applicants, so entry requirements have risen quite a lot and some courses are very difficult to get onto.

In the past there were massive teacher shortages ins ome areas, esp at secondary level, so entry reuirements in those areas dropped - supply/demand forces and all that. This is improving again I believe.

Snd regardless of entry requirements all teachers still have to pass that training course, as well as passing their NVQ year in school.

this is a shortage course

I was a bit [shockk] as someone I know got booted ogff bursary scheme but no-degree types got it, iyswim (but tats goin to higher levels as they told her they didnt take parents of kids with asd- after she'd started

but I did a thread on it ages ago, old news

I am so confused. I googled heptogan and got sex stuff...??

So there's Heptogans, Hexagons and hectogans?

Missed that one Peachy; seems unfair.

Emily - HeptAgon, HexAgon, HectAgon. Google with an A and it should be ok.

WHen my dd was at preschool she bought home a piece of "work" with a shapes on and had been labelled "trangle" and "hexogon" I know she could not read but it made me really

There is no way there should be a sign on a wall in a class that was wrongly spelt.

Hulababy...thanks! lol. Gosh, how embarrassing.

I see, so the problem is the spelling mistake not an incorrectly labeled shape?

'Get your red pen out, I expect you will be correcting the letters home and amending the comments in the reading diary soon! '

doesn't everybody?

err, yes actually

have been err known to put the spelling mistakes right in my boys' reading record book.

Ok am typing this from Cyprus so:
Hexi=six (in Greek)
Hepta= seven
Hekato =hundred

There is always the possibility that it was done after a 90 minute staff meeting, at the end of a long teaching day which included running a lunch time club, a break duty and a fair amount of preparation before school, the inevitable personal responsibilities that everyone has, after a late night spent trying to plan with adequate differentiation whilst coping with the amount of paperwork needed for children with special needs and the forthcoming parents' evening. did I mention the before school meeting with a parent or the interview with the SMT concerning the development of the curriculum leader's role....

Even the most literate and articulate make mistakes; and there's no-one here who can't understand how scrambled your brain can be at the end of a day spent with 1 5 year old let alone 25.

I think it's an error rather than a malicious attempt to confuse the class?

just came acros this looking for something else - good on all of you correcting staff. Million years ago I was a nursery nurse and worked in various nurseries, no bugger cuold spell anything so when a perm member of staff I wrote everyone's display labels. More difficult as a temp to point out everyone's mistakes. Well I still did!

When a nursery nurse in a school I pointed out to the reception teacher (with whom I worked) that the label "look at the teddy's" was incorrect on two levels she just said never mind and left it! (I pulled it down and wrote another!)

Friend of mine is a deput head and goes through all the reports and corrects them before they go home to parents!!!

When my baby son reaches nursery and school age I will point out every bloody error I can see and make it very clear it is wholly unacceptable to employ people to teach children to spell and use correct grammar who are crap themselves.

Wholly accept that errors can be made (and completely appreciate that teachers are overworked underpaid and undervalued - totally -) but not if its the only one and sending home reports that parents correct is inexcusable.

Any errors in the above are typos, I can't be arsed to check it!

Damn you - I tripped the other day and have a very very painful ankle and lower back. I still had to struggle of the sofa to get the dictionary.

I think before you correct the teacher, you need to be clear on the spelling. The Concise Oxford dictionary doesn't have a separate listing for said shape, but says this:

hecto- comb form a hundred, esp of a unit in the metric system [French, formed irregularly from Greek hekaton 'hundred']

So my understanding from this is that the correct spelling is in fact hectogon

Of course, the six sided figure is hexagon

off the sofa

Hellfire - I assume that you never make any errors at all in your life then. Well done you. But TBH I think if that is the case you are a rarity. Everyone I know does make errors from time to time, especially when working under prrssure, to tight deadlines and with a million and one other things that need doing too.

The mature, more professional way to deal with things like this would surely to be to speak to the teacher in question adult to adult, gently point out the error and then move on.

"Any errors in the above are typos, I can't be arsed to check it! "

Yes, teachers are capable of making typos too. Hence the checking system in place in schools for things like reports. That is very common place and definitely nothing out of the ordinary. Infact if a school was not doing this then I would be very worried, as everyone makes errors from time to time and when proof reading your own work it is easy to miss them - your mind reads what is supposed to be there, rather than what is actually there. That is why getting others to proof read documents is essential.

'When my baby son reaches nursery and school age I will point out every bloody error I can see'

HF-you will be SO popular with the teachers, I'm sure!

Send them the DVD of "They Might be Giants"'s album "The 123s" which features the "Nonagon song";

"Everybody at the party is a many-sided polygon;
When a guest arrives they check to see how many sides he has on;
Standing in the corner over there;
There is a shape with four sides who is a square;
And the one who has nine is looking fine, and his name is nonagon.

Everybody turns just in time to see the pentagon arrive;
Counting up his sides it is clear the pentagon has five........."

etc, etc (and yes I do know it by heart

I know a primary school teacher who consistantly makes the mistake with your and you're / their/they're/there on their status updates etc. It makes me a bit that they haven't grasped it despite the years of education that they've gone through. I know some people just can't grasp things like that but worries me nonetheless.

"your and you're / their/they're/there on their "
is much more important than heptagons.

ooh, you've given me an excuse to continue my song...

"Nonagon lets in a guest who has shown up late;
His name is Octagon and his sides add up to eight;
Turning the music on, is a six-sided hexagon;
And they all get in a line and do a dance called the nonagon"

just be grateful you can't actually hear me...

Apparently even the great and the good make this mistake:

en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hectagon

I didn't know TMBG did kids' music. I feel a shopping spree coming on!

They might be giants I didn't know they did children's DVDs either. Looks like a couple of them.