Correcting spelling mistakes in schools

[Titbits]

Please help...I have started an epetition on the governments website.
My local primary school tells me that they don't correct all my children's spelling mistakes because too much red pen is discouraging! Surely it would be better to focus on ENcouraging them to spell correctly...and making them feel proud of their work?
Ofsted are actively promoting this approach even though friends in further education and the business world tell me that they throw away any applications from students with poor spelling.
It seems that in secondary school, spelling errors aren't corrected at all.
Call me old fashioned (!) but copying out a spelling mistake three times at the bottom of the page was how I improved my spelling. Weekly spelling tests seem irrelevant if the children then aren't taught to use the correct spelling in a body of text.

Hope you will help..enough names will mean it's discussed in Parliament. Link below:

epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/10821

[Olifin]

fivecandles I think you speak SO much sense.

[gramercy]

I really think that slow, time-consuming and narrow methods help the less able children.

Some children may not be able to grasp why 2X2=4, for example, but 20 years down the line they'll remember instantly that the answer is 4, IF they have learnt it off by heart.

All this quick, bite-size, let's-move-on-to-something-else-as-we've-done-five-minutes-of-that teaching cannot possibly cement any fundamentals into a child's brain.

[IndigoBell]

Gramercy - and you know that how? What research are you basing this opinion on?

How we learn is very complicated.

Experiments to prove whether one way is better or worse than another are incredibly hard to design and execute.

All children are different. So almost nothing can be generalised.

It appears to me that children in general are far better taught now then they were 20 years ago. It appears to me that far less children get written off and left behind. But I have no statistics to back that thought up.

I suspect young people's spelling, grammar and punctuation is worse not because of what or how they've been taught, but more down to an attitude by the young that that stuff doesn't matter.

Sort of a way of defining their generation. Like prev generations wore stupid clothes or stupid hair cuts or had love ins or peace protests or whatever.

[HerdOfTinyElephants]

I have seen maths teachers on here making that point about tables and number bonds specifically: while all the children need to understand them and what they mean, it's the children who are less able, mathematically, who really need to have them committed to memory as rote facts (because as they move on they are going to encounter more complex calculations in which these are stepping stones, and if they have to work them out each time it will take them longer and they will fall further behind than if they just know as a matter of instant recall that 8+2=10 or 7x8=56).

[gramercy]

IndigoBell - no, I can't cite any research at all. I'm basing my assertions on... common sense.

[IndigoBell]

Ah, well, then you've probably never met any 'less able' children who also have memory problems.........

The reason a lot of children are 'less able' is because they have memory problems.

Some children can't remember anything off by heart.

[gramercy]

Well, then, let's tailor the whole education system to those children, then.

And I have never come across any child in mainstream schooling who can't remember anything .

[cornsylk]

[IndigoBell]

That's the thing though - the whole education system isn't tailored to anything.

Every child receives quite a different education. Kids with good memories receive a very different education to kids with poor memories.

Kids who like writing receive a very different education to kids who hate it.

etc.

I guess I was exaggerating about not being able to remember anything - it's only a slight exaggeration. It's highly unlikely my DD will ever be able to learn her times tables off by heart - and she's not the only one in her class like that.

Certainly she spent all last year learning her 3s and 4s - and hasn't learnt them yet. And that includes going on a specific intervention to teach her her tables. And she's not the worst in her class. :(

She can't even remember her own dollies names!

I don't expect others to be held back by her - and they're not.
I do expect her to be taught - and she is.

I think Einstein said 'to every complex problem, there's a simple, and wrong, answer'

[mrz]

Then gramercy you can't have met very many children in mainstream education because there are some in every class.

[mrz]

That should be every school not class

[Katisha]

In the the words of the great Vulcan Spock, do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? In terms of general policy? Obviously I would expect different treatment for those who really can't remember/learn like the majority.
Have we swung to the position where the needs of the few outweigh those of the many?
In fact is educational theory always swinging like a pendulum?

[mrz]

No the needs of all should be equal

[Tortu]

Afternoon all!

Quite an interesting issue this and one that has been studied loads. If anybody is keen, I can pass on a list of articles and some of the research.

There are a number of reasons why the OP is incorrect (and why the petition will be unsuccessful).

1. Students do not seem to process more than three corrections per page. Whilst this varies with age and experiments using different coloured pens have met with some success, generally, students tend to switch off. Thus we are advised to choose three significant mistakes per page (priority spellings such a commonly-used words, phonic mistakes etc.). Though we are told to underline all the spelling and grammatical mistakes. For similar reasons, we are advised not to write the correction next to the mistake (students then associate the two. You don't want a student linking the mistake and the correction together!).
   
2. Marking itself really doesn't have much impact on students' learning. Contrary to suggestions of posters, students actually don't learn by looking at the teachers' marking. If there is a grade/level presented then students are interested ONLY in this rather than what they have to do in order to improve (they consider the work finished. Why should they have to improve it?) and if there is a target suggested then this will be remembered only if it is then written at the top of a subsequent piece of work.
   
3. Writing out spellings repetitively is a form of rote-learning and not much use. Yes it may help with that particular spelling if the child is a visual learner (and most aren't), but much more valuable is the learning of spelling rules.
   

The most valuable form of marking? Self-assessment (though peer assessment has some value too). Child learn far, far more by learning the skills to assess a piece of work themselves. Not only does this teach them how to improve their own work (thus giving them essential skills for the future and teaching them self-reliance), it also helps them understand the subject in more depth and value their work.

The reality though is that parents love to see loads of red pen, so I liberally sprinkle any books I mark with as much as possible, despite knowing that it is utterly pointless in terms of helping the students learn.

And why (as an English teacher) do I know that the OP is definitely not going to be successful? If I correct every spelling mistake a child makes, it would take at least 15 minutes, per child, per week. I teach 7 classes with about 25 students in each. That's 40+ hours a week. Ha ha ha ha ha.

[Katisha]

Well if you can get As in your work despite it being littered with spelling mistakes and basic grammatical errors, then maybe it doesn't matter any more after all.

Now we just need the employers and CV sifters to catch up with it all.

[mrz]

No one is saying spelling doesn't matter. What people are trying to saying is the OPs petition is very flawed.

[mrz]

What people are trying to saying ..................

[Katisha]

I agree there mrz.

But I do detect an undercurrent that people don't think it matters so much these days.

And while current education techniques are no doubt way more encouraging, at some point, perhaps at secondary level, I think there needs to be some sort of concerted drive to tighten up the basics, even at the risk of being boring...

But by then teachers say they want to concentrate on content not style, so it kind of becomes nobody's main concern.

[purits]

Can you explain about self-assessment, Tortu. How does a pupil develop this insight and how does it apply to spelling? If the child cannot spell in the first place, does not realise that it is spelling incorrectly (because if they knew, they wouldn't do it) and the teacher does not pick them up on it then how does this self-assessment and self-knowledge arise?

[mrz]

That certainly isn't my experience Katisha. Every class in my school teaches spelling at an appropriate level for the children's age/stage.
We start in reception with daily Grammar, Handwriting, Spelling and Punctuation instruction.

[gorionine]

I signed as someone whose English spelling is really bad (not my first language). My Dcs are very bright but their spelling is atrocious and I think it takes the shine away from their hard work when it is riddled with spelling mistakes. Also I have noticed since D1 started High School that they expect them to know magically know how to spell things when there was absolutely no emphasis on spelling in primary school. You cannot on one side nor correct them and on the other expect that at some point they will miraculously know how to spell because the school building has changed.

On a more personal note, I think writing is like a code you use to communicate information, if the code is not the same for all, it is open road for mistakes

[gorionine]

the "nor" should be a "not" and you can take away which ever "know" you want away.

[mrz]

gorionine was your daughter not taught phonics in primary school?

[Tortu]

Purits, it sounds more complicated than it is and there are several different ways in which you can do it, but essentially you are talking about good teaching (NB loads of red pen on work is NOT considered good teaching):

1. Criterion-driven. This is essentially the way in which the teacher would mark it and works best when students are aiming towards a particular exam- say English Language GCSE. You simplify the relevant set of assessment criteria into child-friendly language, so that the child knows what you are looking for when you mark their work. The child then examines their own work and decides what level they would award it, based on the assessment criteria they've been given. This has many benefits: students understand exactly what they have to do in order to improve their grade; by examining their own work closely they are also analysing it; and they are more closely involved in their own learning. My own experience of this is that students are initially much harsher on themselves than I would have been, but very quickly go on to be extremely realistic and accurate. I use this a lot at GCSE and genuinely find it raises standards: if a student knows exactly what to do in order to get an A, they're going to do it, aren't they?
   
2. Student-driven. There is an argument that nobody knows what they were trying to achieve better than the student themselves, so who better to set the target? This one takes a lot of work and structure, so I often find it can take up to a term to set up properly but, again, it gives a student a high level of involvement in their own learning. They are AMAZINGLY honest and good at setting targets. I tend to use this mainly at KS3 and would, quite simply, get the students to go through their own work and set themselves some targets for what they reckon they need to do in order to improve their next piece of work based on the one they've just marked. I'm afraid, that this is where you tend to find that students actually are really good at assessing themselves. The majority of spelling mistakes do not come as a surprise to the students, but are as a result of 'getting the homework done quickly before neighbours' or 'I know this is wrong but I can't be bothered to look in the dictionary'. Getting them to go through and underline the words which they think are spelt incorrectly can be quite revealing. For the younger students I often have a list of suggested targets they might want to choose from and one of the most popular is 'use a dictionary to check my spellings'
   

Overall, self-assessment gives the students ownership of their own learning. They take responsibility for and are part of the assessment progress and it takes away the mysterious nature of assessment. They are much better able to set realistic targets for themselves and understand what they actually need to do in order to achieve.


But have to echo others and say that it would obviously only work if students are still taught the spelling/ grammer rules regularly (which they are).