to put a note in dds homework pointing out the teachers errors

[brook1]

My dd did some comprehension homework last week and brought it home on Friday after it had been marked by the teacher (or possibly ta).

One of the answers my daughter put to her question was "they would have been fed to the sharcks".

The teacher has crossed out fed and replaced it with feed and has crossed out the "c" from "sharcks" and replaced it with an "e" so it now reads "they would have been feed to the shareks".

We are not allowed to speak to the teachers in the mornings about any issues unless they are urgent so we have to make an appointment. I didnt think it was worthy of wasting an appointment but I do feel like it needs pointing out.

DH thinks I will look stroppy if I put a note in.

AIBU.

Addicted, 'purposeful criteria'

As opposed to what exactly?
Unpurposeful criteria?

Moondog, I'm surprised you have done research in this field, but yet have clearly never experienced trying to teach someone with literacy difficulties how to read and write. It is easy for most children, yes, but some need to have it broken down systematically and have repeated over and over again.
I did a degree in psychology, got a 1st for my dissertation on dyslexia and have been a research assistant on and off for about 4 years. I chose not to do the PhD to become a teacher but am now back into the research starting an MSc next year. I'm not claiming to know everything about dyslexia, but I don't think it is a myth, nor do I think literacy difficulties in general are made up. What is your research in and what are your qualifications? what are your views on the Rose Report and the new interventions for spelling? why do you think people have literacy difficulties if learning them is so 'easy'?

Justabout- I'm not sure why you think support for children with literacy difficulties is "chatty". Where do you get that idea from? It is systematic and involves overlearning in the same way your grandmother intervened with her pupil. Teachers and TAs often keep children back for extra input but schools are usually a different set up to a village school where you have the same small group of children for years and are able to give them that kind of support. Funnily enough my father went to a village school and reported spending most of his time 'colouring in'.

Do you mean 'teachers'?' . Fine, all teacher are crap these days. Sorry I'm bored now.

when did kids chant verbs? I'm 45 and went to 4 different primaries and never did such a thing.

Justabout you are dead right.
Trendy nonsense is the single most damaging and pervasive issue in contemporary education.

This book is the best expose of this that I have ever read.

Corrie, to respond to your points

1. Yes, I have taught people to read. My own, others and adults with literacy difficulties.

1. Yes, you are right. Some children need specialist input because they don't learn easy. However this is not surprising because in general, children learn in spite of how they are taught and not because of it.

1. I have just finished my MSc in this topic, looking at specific phonics based reading intervention and assessing its use with children with SN. I am about to replicate the study and write up the paper for a peer reviewed journal.

1. I am a specialist SALT with 15 years' experience in the field of SN with a particular interest in special education.

Oh and I agree with the recommendations of the Rose report, but we have known this stuff for years (ie efficacy of phonics based reading.

The question to be asked therefore in light of this is why teachers leave years of training without a basic understanding of the difference between whole word reading and decoding, the role of phonological awareness, syntax and semantics, the link between poor receptive knowledge of vocabulary and reading and so on and so on and so on.

Most of them through no fault of their own haven't a clue.

Every bloody word Justis.
Thank God somebody sees through the claptrap.
(I know many people like your nephews. The comment is made in the book I linked to that tthere selling a bad hamburger invokes more serious retribution than selling a bad education.

This thread has been interesting.

I have been slightly concerned by the marking one of my DCs has been getting. He makes plenty of mistakes, but a couple of times he has been corrected when the word was spelled correctly and the teacher has substituted in one instance an incorrect spelling and in another a spelling that was correct, but so was the one he used (it was a word that could have two spellings).

I also pulled him up tentatively (not wanting to upset him) on a glaring error in his work. He said he had put what I had said it should be but the teacher had corrected it to the version I was looking at. It was a big mistake. Think: Winston Churchill was PM during World War 1 sort of thing.

I have decided to say nothing other than to encourage him to persist with the correct versions.

This is because a good teacher does not have to know everything, they just have to be able to teach, and his teacher does this brilliantly. Nobody's perfect.

If the same things are corrected a second time I will say something though.

F this is a one-off - how about you use the opportunity to teach your daughter that sometimes even adults get things wrong and that actually that's ok, the bigger lesson is how WE respond when they do? A lesson in grace, maybe?

If this happens often though, I'd say something. I AM a pedant when it comes to the English language. But I also have experience, in a completely different field, of putting loads of time and effort into trying to do something and then being completely deflated when someone chooses to moan about one tiny little detail of one bit of what I've done instead of seeing the other 99.999999% of what I've done which has been perfect.

If this is a one-off, that should say...

Moondog, what is 'trendy nonsense' exactly? Surely the 'trendy' thing is the recent introduction of phonics through letters and sounds and reading recovery schemes? Or does your research show that teaching phonics is not actually helpful? I'm genuinely baffled by what you think is going on in schools to support pupils with literacy difficulties.

As for dyslexia not existing, I actually don't think it is that important to distinguish between someone with literacy difficulties in general and dyslexia in terms of interventions to support them. However, it is a useful term to describe someone who has a very atypical cognitive profile with specific areas of difficulties and often specific strengths. Why should that bother you? Do you accept that your opinion on dyslexia is highly contentious and very offensive to a lot of people?

Is it time to comment on double negatives now?

Bloody teachers - they know nowt / they do nowt. In my day they'd have strung em all up and made them recite Latin verbs until they puked.

moondog

Unpurposeful criteria?

As opposed to NO criteria, leaving a child baffled as to what the teacher actually wants...I suspect a child in your class might be terrified to put pen to paper in case they made a spelling error, or desperately thumbing a dictionary for the duration of a lesson (which of course is so easy for those children who "dyslexia, that doesn't exist")

There is no point setting a task for a child and not giving them an indication of what you will be marking for i.e. giving them purposeful, relevant criteria by which to carry out a task.

If we have been learning about adjectives and I want a child to write a passage about something, I would indicate what I am going to be marking on e.g.

• Exciting adjectives
• Capital letters
• Full stops etc

For that particular piece of work, I would NOT be marking it based on the spelling, or handwriting or how many times they wrote 'and'. The 'purpose' of the task would be to use adjectives, not to spell accurately (although I would indicate where basic spellings have been made for the child to try to correct themselves).

And I in turn am baffled by your reading comprehension skills.
I have already stated quite clearly that I am fully in support of phonics based reading. See my post of 16:55 again. I'll cut and paste for you actually if it helps.

'Oh and I agree with the recommendations of the Rose report, but we have known this stuff for years (ie efficacy of phonics based reading.

The question to be asked therefore in light of this is why teachers leave years of training without a basic understanding of the difference between whole word reading and decoding, the role of phonological awareness, syntax and semantics, the link between poor receptive knowledge of vocabulary and reading and so on and so on and so on.

Most of them through no fault of their own haven't a clue.'

Why are you trying to tell me what my definition of 'trendy nonsense' is? I shall make it explicit again. Trendy nonsense
is the sort of stuff you are coming out with here

'teachers don't always mark spelling mistakes as they don't want to demoralise the child, as has been mentioned earlier. The learning objective maybe focusing on 'ambitious vocabulary' or be geography or history rather than literacy and be about getting the child to express interesting ideas. If the good ideas are there but spelled badly, the child needs credit and encouragement for being about to convey their thoughts. It's not all about spelling! I'll sometimes say "Just write down your ideas, don't worry about spelling too much at the moment, I really want to hear what you think".'

Many people in the world of education subscribe to the myths of 'fun' and 'process' and 'learning style' and 'disability' althoguh it is important to stress that this is not your fault.You are a victim just as much as the children you teach if you truly beleive this stuff.

Even more worryingly, a defualt response to critcism of teaching training methods is to deflect the argumment and turn it into one in which you claim the student is under attack, muc as Addicted has done.

The fact that she feels that the phrase purposeful criteria' is a useful phrase and not pedagogical tautolgy, illustrates the pint beautifully.

As for this reseach you are doing Corrie.Is it your research or are you collecting data for someone else? Please let me know.

In every other sphere, we accept that learning something well requires practice and lots of it. It's a given in things like sports and music but oddly enough, not in education. Someone earlier used the analogy of building a house on imprefect foundations. This is exactly it. Evidence based data driven methods are not used, curricula swoop form topic to topic without realistic assessment of whether children have grasped basic concepts. It doesn't matter for the clever kids, they, as i sadi, learn anyway.

The less able or economically disadvantaged are stuffed.

Themost effective educational model of all is Direct Instruction which is closely scripted involves (surprise surprise) much repetition, choral responding. This was amply demonstated in the largest educational experiment in the world Project Followthrough which ran for nearly 20 years in the States and involved thousands of children.

Its use meant that academic outcomes (and the more nebulous emotional/self esteem ones) soared in schools which used it, many of which were poor black inner city schools.

What happened? It was quietly shelved, excuses made to avoid its widespread implemantation (reneging on earlier decisions) and as a result, most peopel who claim to know about education have never heard of it.

A fucking scandal of the highest order but then again it suits the mandarins to have winners and losers and to claim the losers are losers because of their 'learning style/dyslexia/background/ADHD/ODD' and so on and so on.

Meanwhile noone stops to say
'Hang on, maybe the kids isn't crap.Maybe, jusy maybe, it's the teaching.'