knifes

[hillian]

DS ( who is in year 5) has comes home with 10 words to learn to spell. All of them far too easy but the one that bothers me is KNIFES.

This is spelling homework FGS!

The words were written out in her handwriting. And she's a NQT.
what would you tell DS to do in the test to check he's learned the words?

isn't necessarily incorrect sorry

wellthen the NQT mention was just a concern about how she might feel having her mistakes pointed out so early in her career. I don't want to be the first ever.

Also her temper issues are a concern as she doesn't have much self control (it seems).

prefect doesn't have a silent letter
I would definitely send her a note saying you are sure it was a slip and she didn't intend the 's' but that you hoped she would correct the slip before the test.
That gives her the get out of thinking [pretending] she meant 'knife' rather than 'knives'.
She will be grateful[maybe].

I wouldn't teach it as a silent letter - gives the wrong message; letters are not 'silent'. Rather, 'kn' is an alternative grapheme for /n/.

Can't quite remember offhand what the spelling program is for Year 5 but I'm pretty sure it's not random words, particularly at this point in the year. Think it might kick off with unstressed vowels in polysyllabic words.

I've dug out the list. Silent letters are not theme but I don't know what is:-
knifes
loaves (she got the v right that time)
heroes
prefect
heart
illegal
immature
fierce

So can anyone tell me what DS is supposed to learn from that list?

so it was only 8 words (used to be 10 last year)

I was going to suggest plurals (but only applies to first 3 words)
suffixes & prefixes (but heart & fierce rule out that theory...pre-fect?)
so random it is

Could be a list of commonly misspelled words, although I wouldn't have thought prefect was one (or whether illegal or immature were commonly used in Y5 writing). I would definitely send a note to ask whether she really wanted them to learn 'knifes' rather than the more frequently used 'knives'. Of course this just highlights the ridiculousness of learning random spellings without any context.

Maybe 'prefect was meant to be 'perfect'

I'm very at that list. There's no theme to it at all, and including 'knifes' as a verb makes it worse. Illegal and Immature don't sound like commonly misspelled words to me, they work by the rules of prefixes after all. I'd have a quick word about the 'knifes'/'knives' thing just to clarify.

It also seems a bit basic for Yr5, especially with a bright child.

Maybe the teacher has difficulty with her own spelling and so she thinks these words are challenging for Y5??

There's no way she meant to teach the children the verb "to knife" ( the school prides itself on its pastoral care).

Ah, but it can also be used when describing the an object metaphorically slicing through something (see above link).

I don't think that's what she meant either though.

I would ask whether the word was supposed to be 'knives' as in plural noun or 'knifes' as in verb as you were discussing it with your DS.

That way you have drawn attention to a possible mistake on her part whilst giving her wriggle room to save face. The ultimate aim is to make sure that she double checks the spelling of the words she's sending out rather than embarrass/aggravate her.

Serious spelling errors I would just go for a correction in red pen and say nothing, but this one is tricky.

Why don't you go and ask her? Rather than criticising her. She's only human after all.

Whogivesashit - read what i wrote, I am not criticising her. But the answer to your question is because she might react as you have done.

Yeah you were!

They might have been words that children in the class spelled wrongly in their own writing, hence the apparently random nature of the selection... And the teacher may have unwittingly copied the original error whilst meaning to put the correct version on the list! But I do think I'd be inclined to point out (nicely) that the spelling is incorrect before they do the test!

Several children have pointed the spelling mistake out to the teacher now. So today she explained to the whole class that she copied them from a list. The list spelled it knifes.
The teacher says she noticed the error at the time but copied it exactly as she saw it.
I guess what she is saying is that there was a typo and she didn't have the self confidence to correct it??
Weird list though...

ex teacher who can not spell. I had a dictionary in class which I used in front of the children... talking them through the process, to check the spellings. i would have checked each word on a spelling list very carefully in fear I had missed a mistake.

"So today she explained to the whole class that she copied them from a list. The list spelled it knifes."

Bollocks!

Do you know, Clam, that's what I thought too!

I met her today along with all the other parents. Dear God! Its not just her spelling that's bad.

This was her first ever meeting with all the parents in her entire career. The one at the start of the year is always nice, full of hope with everyone being polite. She described how she doesn't like marking at least five times. How she doesn't give work out for the good of her health. How she'd rather be drinking coffee and watching TV than marking our children's work. How she doesn't want to differentiate work for the class because that would be even more work for her! ....all of this in her monologue to the class whilst the rest of us just sat open-mouthed.

Oh and she talked about how important it is that the children develop their spelling. How she is going to teach them spelling rules, not just random words.

Mainly though she seemed to have a superiority complex, but maybe that's just how she came across because she was obviously nervous.

Maybe she thought telling us all about how much marking she has to do was meant to garner our sympathy??

Oh dear God! Where was the Head in all this?

oh ye god's

i would be writing an email to clarify some of her points.