How much sloppy work from the teacher should I tolerate before approaching the HT?

[Alliwantisaroomsomewhere]

DS is in Yr 3 at a good enough school! There have been 2 or 3 minor spelling or grammatical errors in homework tasks which I have (very graciously ) overlooked.

However, last term DS had to do some time telling homework ie write down what the time is on the clock face shown. Teacher marked all of the his work correct when over half was incorrect. I wrote a note to the teacher asking about it and she apologised profusely saying that she had marked the homework but had no idea how that had happened.

This week's homework for numeracy had a number pattern that was unfathomable and the literacy homework had a grammatical error that would have made the work confusing for children.

What really pissed me off a lot was that DS's literacy homework from last week was marked all incorrect when not only was it correct, but the week before's work was very, very similar and again all correct, but this was accepted by the very same teacher. Again I made a note in DS's literacy homework book, and all she has done is initial and date my comments.

The marking is very sloppy and I wonder whether I should raise all these issues with the HT or do I let it go and see if things improve. All parents recently received a note from the HT stating that moves were afoot to improve the quality of teaching and learning in the school.

Do I put up and shut up or speak up?

(sorry, very long and rather dull...)

Yes, Feenie. You are right! Not all teachers are as described here. I also appreciate that teachers today have to do what the curriculum and current teaching methods prescribe. What upsets me is that clearly it does not work so it should be changed - by "it" I mean the curriculum and teaching methods.

There's a thread on TES at the moment where teachers were arguing that the solution for struggling readers/writers was to send them outside with a TA to play games rather than "teach" them what they need to know to make progress ...I despair!

That's fine - just checking I didn't need to leave the thread because it had turned into teacher bashing central

The curriculum IS changing, in 2014. But I was moaning on here the other day about a very clumsily constructed sentence in the English curriculum, so I am still despairing.

Cross posts - we are both despairing, mrz, and on a Sunday too.

I will probably not be going off in search of a thread like that, it's not what my blood pressure needs on a Sunday evening!

I am definitely NOT teacher bashing, Feenie! I hope I did not come across that way. Something is wrong when someone who wants to become a teacher does so, yet is unable to spell or write properly. It goes back to what a PP said a few pages ago that a sunny disposition and kind manner with children (or something along those lines) does not make a good teacher.

"I see teachers as victims of a culture where fun matters more than intellectual rigour". Moondog,that was very well put.

Really Mrz??!!

Teaching well matters more than practically anything else.
Teachers should be the creme de la creme of pedagogues and treated like Gods.

As the fantastic Vicki Snider says
'There is more comeback from selling someone a bad burger than there is from selling them a bad education.'

These were my responses
I feel that often the teaching and more importantly the learning gets lost in the "gimmicks" and in an attempt to make everything fun we do the opposite as well as failing to teach effectively.

I totally agree, unfortunately often in a desire to make everything into a game the real learning is lost and children only remember the game not what the teacher intended them to learn.

not well received

mrz, not well received on the TES website??? I will join the rest of you in that state of despair. (And I have just announced to DS that from tomorrow we will be doing times tables every day! Not starting today because I have had some wine already and I cannot be arsed.)

Blood pressure still raised here too! I know this is a primary thread, so apologies for the derailment, but why can't someone joint the dots (surely you can do a GCSE in that nowadays? ) and realise that all this entertaining and diverting of children from the idea of learning anything is directly contributing to teenagers in FE being unable to read a book, research properly, or indeed concentrate on anything for longer than half an hour.

Forgive me if this has been covered; I have read the whole thread but not all at once so I may not remember everything. Also, I am in the US but I think we have many of the same issues.

How much of the problem can be attributed to the possible over-emphasis on student-lead learning? I am all for pupils' active participation in the learning process, but the exhortation to teachers to be the "guide on the side" rather than the "sage on the stage" seems very problematical to me when taken to extremes, which based on anecdotes from my friends (my children are young adults), does seems to happen.

I was very good at English and history, but struggled mightily with math. I still remember one of the best teachers I had in high school who ually painstakingly explained math concepts ad nauseum it would seem, but who finally got through to me. She was, without question, the "sage on the stage," and I bless her name nearly every day of my life.

The "ually" above is supposed to be "actually."

SconeRhymeswithGone (of course it does!), I agree wholeheartedly. There is understandably - to some extent - a big emphasis on learning rather than teaching. However, some things cannot be discovered from your peers. Rules of grammar, algebra, historical facts etc etc etc need to be taught.

Once the children or students know these things, then let them play and explore and create colourful collages.

But please, for god's sake, make them READ Macbeth. Read it: then have a look at the comic book, the updated movie and the Spongebob Squarepants version (disclaimer:I made that last one up). When that has all been done, then make a pretty collage to decorate your classroom wall.

I wonder if we are a bit protected from this in Scotland (as usual). As far as I am aware, in order to teach a subject at secondary level in Scotland, you have to have an honours degree in that subject. Certainly, my DH has a good honours degree from an ancient in the subject he teaches. He also loathes the 'design a poster' school of teaching

Yes All.
Do the weighty stuff, then kick back with the froth.
I won't let my children watch a dvd of a children's classic ^until we've read the book.

Ah the 'design a poster' school of teaching.

I am hoping there will be plenty of opening for poster and leaflet making when DS is older - he has so much practice.

I'm reading Alice in Wonderland with my class but Disney and Johnny Depp got there first ...annoying!

I've just supervised some homework about designing and describing pillows.
The wine came out. It had to.
Don't get me started on bloody cooking, where all the ingredients are sent in pre weighed. That's not cooking. It's food assembly.

My SIL teaches high school science. She and I have had some good laughs over the pitfalls of the fun (and "student-lead") approach to learning in the science lab.

'all this entertaining and diverting of children from the idea of learning'

And there was me thinking that a creative approach to learning made most children want to learn more and more.
I don't really understand what 'entertaining and diverting' has been going on.

I have to say that I think the criteria at L2/3 particularly, expect a lot of a 7 year old. As the children achieve their target of using full stops and capital letters, they are immediately required to be using adjectives/ time connectives/connectives/adverbial phrases/ different sentence openings/ correct spellings/joined handwriting/ paragraphs (etc!)..... at which point they start missing the odd full stop. We did a recent writing audit and one poor little Y2 said she couldn't keep up with everything we expect her to do when she's writing!

I think it's a case of pushing these children (who have been alive about 80 months, and have been speaking fluently for about 30-35 months) too quickly, rather than not doing enough teaching of skills! They're drowning in skills!

I think sometimes "entertaining and diverting" has replaced learning because people believe that is being "creative".

What I meant was the 'make a poster rather than write about it' thing. I do understand that people of all ages learn more when they're enthusiastic about something, what I mean is the substituting of learning anything for the arsing about.

ipadquietly, then could the teaching system slow down a bit. Start with basic sentence structures. The cat sat on the mat. Make sure that basic subject-verb-object sentences are written correctly. Then move onto more descriptive ways of recounting that incident.

Perhaps it is a case of teaching too much, too quickly and too superficially. DS knew what alliteration was in Reception. He could not form any letters very well yet, but alliteration and rhyme were known well to him (yes, I appreciate his muscles and fine motor skills were still developing etc).

It strikes me from this thread and others I've read on here that there are really good educators, who know at what speed their students should be progressing, what they need to know and how they need to learn it. For these people the government should leave well alone.
Then there are the other teachers/lecturers, who either don't have the personality, or skills, or maybe intelligence for teaching, who should never have qualified/been employed in the first place. This is where intervention seems to be lacking. All about face innit?