to mark my child's report,and send it back having highlighted errors?!

[motherbeyond]

my dd is 3,and came home with her 1st report.the first thing was our surname was spelt incorrectly "mr and mrs galagher"! who spells gallagher with 1 L?

then,inside,there were several glaring grammatical spelling errors.

so,what do you think?is it arsey if i point them all out?

they're supposed to be teaching my child the basics...and yet they can't even spell simple words like,quiet...and use tense correctly

It's defence, LeQ

I would definitely point out they'd spelled her name wrong, just in case their records are also incorrect. Correcting their grammar and spelling is impolite, however, and likely to lead to ill feeling.

A space before question marks, Jamie? Like this ? And this ? Oh no, I'm not keen on that at all. Surely for consistency you'd also need a space before commas , full stops , etc . And exclamation marks ! All of which look wrong , wrong , wrong ! ? .

I often return my dd's reports to the school office with a letter of complaint due to the fact they are statement ba nks that tell me nothing. I often have to write at leat 100 reports plus sometimes 150 plus and have never copied and pasted and when forced to use statement banks I added a hand written report to the end

Sorry but YABU. It's a nursery report, not a school report,. Yes, they are supposed to teach your child 'the basics' but this doesn't include teaching her to read or spell.

leQ

I am crap at spelling and grammar but I am good teacher - I can spell better than my 5 year olds..I also find it very hard to proof read my own stuff - much easier someone else's it and much easier to make mistakes on a computer than hand writing...

nursery I wouldn't bother - they are likely to be great with children but probably not university graduates (disclaimer I am and I am still crap)

My school has a proof-reader for reports thank god - didn't stop me writing some child had been on a trip and hadn't ... in my defence dh had just had a serious accident and nearly died during the trip time plus I was writing reports in the early stages of pregnancy .. hey ho I held my hands up and said I was sorry!!!

Yes, the nursery is supposed to teach her "the basics". Which include such basic skills as accepting with good grace the fact that others occasionally make mistakes. I don't think red lining the report would fall into that category.

At some point in her education, she will certainly need to learn correct spelling and grammar. It is unlikely to be at nursery school, and the grammatical errors they are making will not scar her for life.

Hopefully the teachers are warm and supportive and competent at helping three year olds to master important skills like co-operative play, listening to others, speaking with confidence and using their imaginations. If they are, there is really no need to worry about the teachers' ability to spell. Honestly.

PS Two spaces after a full stop. But I wouldn't fight to the death over it.

Although I am now feeling mildly disgruntled that MN has deleted my second space. There, they've done it again!

The way to ensure a DC starts learning correct grammar right from the beginning is to read well-written books to him or her and encourage reading once this skill is learned, and also to make sure your speech is grammatically correct. Consistency is the key. Children absorb far more of a language outside of school than they ever will during school hours.

LeQueen, what if they're not mistakes at the beginning though? The most effective thing I ever did as a teacher was only focus on one thing at a time. So first use phonics to spell out initial sounds, then more sounds. Start to put spaces in. Try to keep on the line. Work on letter formation (and orientation). Learn to spell some words (not the phonetic ones). Develop content and style.

I'd work on each one at a time, and move on (or revisit) as needed. The writing at the beginning wasn't spelt right, or always formed right, but in terms of what they were learning, it was often spot on. By the end of the year the would be able to do all the things above.

I always told my pupils that if they were making mistakes they were learning. But I wouldn't pick apart their work for every error: just on what we'd covered already. They learnt to be self-aware and recognise their own mistakes, which naturally leads to trying to correct them or avoid making them again.

One space for me, BTW.

Oh, and I'd be mortified if I ever sent a report with an error in it - but ours were all checked and I was part of the pedant gang at school. I'd still not correct anything I got sent from school though - although DD is not quite 4 yet and it hasn't come up yet.

It's too late now for me to type and not make mistakes.

I haven't read all of the posts but I started a thread not long ago about misuse of English in chat.
I would say it is a bit arsey to correct and return it, but would point out the name spelling - my first name is frequently said or spelled incorrectly and I hate it. Maybe just mention it to the teacher (or whoever wrote the report), just to make sure it's correct on file with them.

I had a teacher in school whose spelling was atrocious. She was an RE teacher who couldn't spell disciples

I've just remembered being told to put my little finger on the paper after a full stop to get the right space! That was handwritten though, and I can't remember what we were taught about typing.

FWIW I've read that it's really not a good idea to correct spelling and grammar right from the start. You just keep modelling the correct spelling. It could be pretty harmful and demoralising to correct every word - after all, presumably if your toddler said "dod" you wouldn't say "no, that's wrong, it's dog". You'd say "well done, it's a dog!" and be really happy at their attempt!

There was a thread recently where someone mentioned their daughter spelling while as wighl - this is actually pretty clever of her; she was using a rule, but the wrong one, and gradually her experiments will become more accurate.

I seem to have wandered off topic a bit - and I say this all as a spelling tyrant BTW. But you learn to relax a bit when you have a dyslexic DSD!

When I was 12, I shamefully read my cousin's diary. What was more shameful was that I did it with a red pen in hand ... You get the picture

Poor thing still hasn't forgiven me. However, her spelling, punctuation and grammar are now second to none

LeQueen - Mathanxiety and Minicron... have replied for me, really. It's a question of age-appropriateness. At three, the OP's daughter is nowhere near being at the stage of picking up bad habits that she's going to have to unlearn later. And in my (admittedly limited) experience, children are quite accepting of the fact that there are new expectations as they get older.

Any reading and writing a three year old is doing now is presumably at a very, very early stage, when getting hung up on spelling and grammar are not going to help her one bit. As long as she's hearing lots of stories and conversation, her language should develop quite happily, even if her teachers make a few mistakes.

In the meantime, my main point is that I'd be far, far more concerned about a nursery worker who had a dull imagination or an unwillingness to get their hands dirty out in the garden, for example. Because those really are important skills to help that age group learn about the world! But we do seem to get fixated on reading and writing.

(Is it OK to start a sentence with "But" these days????)

Smithagain, starting a sentence with 'but' is okay I think. 'Because' on the other hand...

I love these threads. At some point, I always stop reading the content and just go through looking for spelling errors to correct.

For example:

'I am by nature a spelling facist who used to judge others harshly on their spelling'

Madgebettany, it's 'fascist'.

I don't really understand 'rushing' as a reason for bad grammar or spelling, to be entirely honest. It would take me longer to leave out the spaces than to put them in, because I'd have to override my instinct. Isn't that the case for most of us? If you know how to write, you just default to that, typos excepted?

LeQueen, you are cracking me up on this thread, by the way. Good work. Also, can I come work for your husband?