official letter from dd's school telling me they are going to lower standards:and they are proud of this!

[hk78]

thank god there's a place to get this crap off my chest!

i've had a letter from school, telling me all about the 'new marking policy' (i wasn't aware of the old one )

basically, the main theme of the new policy is that "not all spellings are corrected. We feel that it is demoralising to a child if there work is covered in red pen - I can remember that feeling well from my own school days!"

1. they are proudly sending a letter to say they are going to let things get even more slack

1. 'there work is covered in red pen' ????

i don't think there's any point in even complaining - no-one is bothered any more are they?!?!?

I would complain and take in letter with mistake to drive home the point.

Utterly ridiculous

Take a big red pen.

They are doing the children a disservice.

It really says 'there'

Well no wonder they won't be correcting all spellings.

THe urge to return it with red pen all over it would be too great for me to resist

couldn't you ask why spelling mistakes are totally fine, but why they aren't allowing pupils to think 2+2= 5? or maybe they are.

at "there". obviously all that red pen didn't work for the letter writer.

However I feel there is a place for not overly correcting - creative writing for instance. I don't pull my piano students up for every tiny mistake. I'm more interested in finding out which concepts they haven't understood and getting them to put a lovely performance together.

Notwithstanding the typo, can I say, that as a child who had all her many corrections pointed out on all the pages in my book, youdo give up hope? And you give up trying.

It makes you feel an utter failure and fairly worthless. If the school is trying to avoid doing that to children, good on them!

But how do you then improve things MB? I understand the esteem/trying issue but children to need to learn how to spell and how to write grammatically. If these errors are not corrected surely a message is being sent that it is ok to write like this.

They didn't say that they were going to leave all the spellings incorrected.

We choose 3 per page

If a child is a poor speller, it is utterly unrealistic to expect them to learn every wrong spelling. From personal experience I can tell you that they couldn't do it, no matter how hard they try. If a child is faced, as I was with possibly 20 spelling corrections on a page, they end up felling horrible. So you give up trying. I did. I still can't spell. I can spell scientific words, because I learned them is small packets! I then went to on Oxford. I'm not stupid, but I can't spell.

This school is doing the best thing for the students. And if it makes spelling pedants feel all up in arms over the issue, they might want to think about how best to get people to spell, rather than simply delighting in the fact that they can.

It is akin, if you like, to a parent expecting perfect behaviour and correcting every single thing the child does wrong. the child eventually feels that they can never be good enough, and it kills something inside them.

We, as parents, all know that this would be a cruel, hurtful and pointless thing to do to a child. Pointless because we know it wouldn't work. But when it comes to spelling, why do you think it is different?

I see what you are saying and sort of agree but having worked for a guy who was the same age as me whose English was appalling (and he is a native!) I was very glad I had been educated in Ireland!

If the DO pick three words on every page to correct and then actually make sure the child knows them, then that is fine. Wonder if it will happen that way though.

BTW I do know that the word in Uncorrected!

He might be dyslexic. I probably am, but in my day we were just made to feel that we were thick. My son has dyspraxia, and when I say his dx, I ticked most of the same boxes!

I simply can't do it, I can't remember the words. It isn't because I'm lazy or stupid. It isn't that I don't read enough. The mass of words that I can't spell is simply too great.

And I can't look things up, because I can't spell them well enough to find them!

But now, at the grand old age of 45 I have mostly stopped caring. I spell check all my work for school, I can comminicate with people. And if they feel all superior because they catch me out, well bully for them.

As an English dept in my last school we would never correct all mistakes. We'd choose 3 or 4 and concentrte on those

As a teacher I have to say that I agree with the mentioned method of marking. I would rather highlight 3 spelling errors and then have an expectation that they go away and learn the 3 words. If I highlighted every mistake it would be unrealistic to expect them to do anything constructive about it. Also, sometimes the objective of the lesson is very specific. For example if the work was on using full stops correctly and they had every full stop in the right place, I feel it unfair to cover their work in red pen highlighting spelling errors.
Just my opinion.

My mother (primary school teacher) doesn't correct all spelling mistakes in a piece of work. She picks a few to concentrate on, based on the child -- so if the child is one who really struggles with spelling she concentrates on the most commonly-used words, while if the child has only made a few mistakes they will all be corrected.

But I shake my head at "there work"...

I don't think it's such a bad idea. Tend to agree with mb. I know that my DS's literacy often has howlers but they aren't all marked as wrong because the work is otherwise well-written and fluent and full of ambitious words. Covering an otherwise readable and enthusiastic 'essay' with red would without a doubt put him off. Or do you really think that accurate spelling is the main purpose of literacy learning?

Surely wide reading is the best way to familiarise a child with wider vocabulary and correct spelling.

I like mb's explanation especially when you have a child who finds it all difficult. School can be incredibly demoralising.

I can see the value in just doing three but am appalled at "there work".

I would write letter (quoting some of these posts!) but pointing out that the mistake in their letter was unacceptable

Thank you, that is very kind!

As part of my PGCE training I had to sit in on a MFL lesson in a subject that I had never studied. It gave me a stunning, and mildly horrific, insight into how school must be for children who do not have a natural ability for language.

I now make sure that I use lots of pictoral prompts in all my lessons, because it really helps learning.

I think that spelling, to a degree, is one of those things that people either 'get' or don't get. For those who can do it, they find it almost impossible to understand just how hard it is for we 'non-getters' and the temptation is to think that we are simply lazy, stupid or willfully careless.

I could write posts to MN that are correct in spelling, but I would be writing at the level of a 10 year old. In the end I have decided that inaccurate but fluid posts are probably better. Who knows, I may be wrong. I hope not.

What's MFL mb?

sorry, darned teacher speak!

Modern Foreign Languages. I sat in on a german language lesson, having never done german in school. It was an eye opener to see the effect of 'lagging behind' in a language. By the time I'd figured out what they were on about, the class had already moved on to something else! This is what it must be for poor readers of english.

Thanks - I can see what your saying. I remember physics in secondary school being something I just couldn't "get" Once I had worked out what they were talking baout just like you the class were so much further on. I really felt like I was drowning! The teacher didn't really help and not surprisingly at the first opportunity I gave it up .

It's a horrible feeling when you feel that whatever you do it still isn't right.

However I have to agree about "there"....just goes to show that there's more to checking a letter than spell check!!!

TBH, that is why I tend to teach with lots of visual prompts. So that the kids can see what is going on. And if that isn't possible, say the moevement of electrons in a circiut, we act it out!

There are still some kids who can't get it, but we do try! What I wouldn't do was then gloat that I could understand it, and they couldn't.

And sometimes (and it is just sometimes, before I'm flamed out of existance) the threads about 'I've spotted a teacher's spelling mistake' do gloat horribly.

Maybe it's the irony of this particular spelling mistake that makes it a little amusing.....or maybe we are all missing the point and it was done on purpose????!!!