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 am an English teacher and taught all abilities at Secondary school. Prior to my mat leave I was specialising in pupils with behavioural problems who had been expelled from mainstream school. With these pupils I can guarantee you that the fastest way to turn them off learning is to correct lots of mistakes. They consider themselves as failures anyway so highlighting mistakes merely strengthens their ideas and switches them off even further. This also applies to lots of children in mainstream schools.

With higher ability sets I would obviously correct a few more mistakes especially if I knew that they were mistakes or slips of the pen rather than not knowing.

One problem that teachers will have is when children want to spell a word correctly so they are all either holding their hands up or looking in a dictionary or queuing up to ask the teacher. This can really slow the process down and lots of children will lose the flow/ideas that they had and be concentrating on spelling rather than 'writing'

I tell them to spell it as they 'think' it should be spelled and underline the word so that they can go back to it later. If they have no idea how to spell it then try to draw a quick sketch eg a picture of a mouse. Just to keep things going and then the finer points can be sorted out later.

If we're trying to get pupils to extend their vocabulary we have to give them a safe environment and not make them scared of making a mistake. I'd rather a child 'tried' to spell a difficult word than stayed with safe words that they 'know' how to spell.

Same as MB- I have been trained to teach and go on professional development courses on a regular basis and I have to disagree with you Anna- it is absolute madness to mark every spelling/grammatical error.

In addition to destroying pupil morale it's a waste of time with lots of children who never do anything about their mistakes. far better for the teacher to make a note of common mistakes and spend the time preparing a lesson for the whole class on some common spelling/grammar errors.

agree with pixiefish!

My ds writes many of his letters the wrong way round. And numbers.

Last year, in his weekly spelling tests, he regularly got 0/10 because any word with an inverted letter was marked incorrect. We gave up practising spellings because he was completely and utterly demoralised by this.

Which was a shame, because God knows his spelling, although 'phonetically plausible' is truly awful and could do with a bit of work...

Does the whole thing of it was right before, and now it isn't not crop up then?

(I am completely in support of this system btw - just intrigued!)

It drives me mad when teachers persist with spelling tests in cases like that. Also, oten it is children who don't have any support at home who get 0/10, how is that fair? Spelling tests don't teach children how to spell. They make be angry tbh, no point whatsoever!

I can assure you that there is plenty of support for ds at home. But I have to say that after two terms of despair, the most supportive thing to do was to stop putting him through it.

FAB typo in the letter. I would point it out but in a jovial manner, I think.

As for the policy, I agree with it. As a 'resting' English teacher (SAHM at the mo) I can tell you that a perfectly spelt, but unadventurous piece of writing is MUCH less indicative of quality/talent than a well-crafted piece of writing containing odd errors in spelling. I used to do an exercise with yr 9 pupils in which they looked at several pieces of work done in SATs exams, wkith a view to the pupils trying to grade the work. The poorest piece of work was level 3 standard (i.e. average for low juniors) but was perfectly spelled; the best piece of work (level 8 - on a par with A at GCSE) contained a few spelling errors but excellent vocab and wondeful phraseology.

I am a good speller myself, and agree it is very important. However, it is not more important than content. Let's not demoralise children by showing them every error they make. (Twinkle's approach is a good one IMO)

Not as fab as my DD's class teachers mistake! (I can't even call it a typo.. he had written it!)

She had written "The surface of the planet looks bumpy and rufe"

So he had got his red pen and put "ruff^"!!!

SO I got my black pen (discreetly at Parent's evening) and wrote in thickly "Or perhaps even ROUGH?!!!")

Message withdrawn

Tellus, sorry that last post was phrased badly! I realised that you were giving lots of support and was suggesting that in cases like yours spelling tests are useless. I was also making a seperate point that spelling tests are also unfair on the children who don't receive help at home.

Message withdrawn

Kerrymum- I would obviously correct more in a top set student's work but then again I would also expect fewer mistakes

I'll let you off then twinkle

Thanks Doodledotoo - he has just discovered google actually. Marvellous! Only trouble is that now he knows you can type and the letters come out the right way around, getting him to pick up a pencil is even harder

They have changed the system at his school now actually. He is much happier about things.

shiny that reminds me of when I marked a piece of maths homework... I put a cross next to 24/3=8. The parent had written a long note about how they had worked this out over and over again and even checked it on a calculator and they were sure it was correct and could I explain why it wasn't! Teachers are only human! mostly.

LOL shiney, that's hilarious!

But the thing is kerry, I was at the upper end of the class. In fact, in the vast majority of classes I was the top of the class. But I still can't spell!

And I did have all the corrections made, and it turned me off the topic utterly, since all they did was convince me that I couldn't do it.

Being at the top of the class doesn't mean that you can actually do everything perfectly.

I had the most amazing Eglish teacher who, in spite of my poor grasp of spelling, made me love words and language and reading. Had she beein a Gradgrind, I would have loathed her subject. In the end I think I had the better end of the deal.

Exactly, MB. That's what good english teachers do.
(Case rested emoticon)

I suppose it does depend on the context, if the piece of work is creative writing then there are more important things than whether each word is correct. Is spelling not taught in its own right any more? I'm sure we used to have spelling tests and they did work, surely for complicated words, learning how to spell them is the only way!

At dd's (bilingual) school they had a small blackboard up outside the year 1 floor decorated with autumn leaves and so on with the words "Herbst/Autum"
written on it in chalk.

I have withstood the temptation to add an "n" but honestly you'd think if they were just writing up one word in English in such a highly visible place, they would get it right...

Was dyslexia that well known though? DH spent his school years being told he was thick and stupid - it was only when he went to art college (11 years ago) that they announced he had dyslexia.

I don't know how old MB is, but I have a feeling she is mid 30s + (panics incase MB is just very wise for her age ), so it would be a few years behind DH again iysiwm.

I have to agree to some extent with Anna. It shouldn't get to the stage where a child produces a page full of spelling mistakes at age 7.

I went to an English school abroad where most of the pupils had English as a second language, yet most of my classmates at age 6/7 could write a coherent essay in proper English with very few spelling/grammatical mistakes. We were encouraged to read a lot as well (fewer electronic distractions then!) which helped with imaginative and adventurous use of language in creative writing. When I arrived in the UK aged 10 I was surprised at how easy it all was - and this was in the 70s. I was particularly surprised that grammar wasn't taught at all! IMO that is appalling. In France and Italy they teach grammar, as I'm sure they do in Germany and other countries. Why can't they do that in the UK? What's so negative about teaching basic language structure?

I used to give private lessons in languages and I used to hate taking on British students who had no MFL background as I'd have to waste the first few lessons explaining the basic stuff like infinitives, tenses, clauses etc. All simple stuff that other nationalities learned in primary school.