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Primary education

Join our Primary Education forum to discuss starting school and helping your child get the most out of it.

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Original poster

Spelling/grammar mistakes by teachers

76 replies

UnquietDad · 15/09/2006 09:14

These INFURIATE me beyond belief. These people are supposed to be teaching our children,and yet we sometimes get letters home with incorrect spellings, weird grammar and a slapdash approach to punctuation - especially apostrophes.

Question is - what do you do?

It's very difficult to make a stand without looking like some sort of ridiculously pedantic fusspot.

And it's not just the letters - there, staring me in the face every sodding day when dd goes into her classroom, is one of those big commercially-produced, laminated A1 charts with everyone's birthday on them and "Happy Birthday" in several languages. Trouble is, it says:

"WHO'S birthday is it today?"

Give me strength. I almost wanted to tear the bloody thing down.

And the French on it is wrong, so for all I know some of the other languages may be too.

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rustybear · 16/09/2006 06:22

At our junior school, the two year 3 teachers are Scottish and south African, and the deputy head (who teaches y 6) is from NZ. The kids seeem to cope with it very well, though the kiwi guy has to be careful when pronouncing the name of the other year 6 class, which is 6C - he told a child to "go to sexy to get your book"

singersgirl · 16/09/2006 08:59

And actually even if 'haitch' is dialectal, I expect teachers to teach the standard English variant of something as important as the alphabet. I agree that double negatives are dialectal too, but I don't want my sons' teachers to use them.

I'm sure if a francophone Swiss teacher was teaching in a French school in France, they wouldn't teach the children "septante" because that's what they say at home - they'd teach "soixante-dix".

kiskidee · 16/09/2006 09:36

the problem is the destruction of grammar teaching in the generation who are now at least 40 yrs old and younger. this generation of teachers now have very little clue of punctuation. only now, the kids in roughly year eight are coming into secondary with some basic ideas of grammar. like - a noun is a naming word - not even a noun defines a person, place, object or idea. they don't yet have a clue with an apostrophe or possessive is all about.

if the teachers didn't get taught grammar at school then most of them surely won't be up to speed on all the potential grammar pitfalls.

i count myself lucky. i went to school abroad and grammar was compulsory till the equivalent of yr 11.

aitch71 · 16/09/2006 09:55

ghosty, are you from glasgow? honestly, i'm from here and i can't understand some of the more dense accents. i used to live in australia and people used to say that i had a strong accent and i used to piss myself laughing. the mere fact that they could make out what i was saying precluded my having a strong accent... i am not talking about a normal, generally comprehensible glaswegian accent here, i promise.

plus, i think if a child has a teacher whose accent is recognisably from 'abroad' that is different and the child will cope with a switch, or if a child picks up a regional accent because the parents have moved, then fine... but for someone to be teaching in a coarser version of the parents' voice, using dialect, is not on imo.

hulababy · 16/09/2006 09:57

Am I picking this up right? You can't teach children if you have an accent? Teachers have to actuively change their accent to fit in with where they teach? And that isn't discrimnating at all?!

Even BBC news allows accents and dialects mow you know!

aitch71 · 16/09/2006 10:14

no, you aren't picking this up right. there is a difference between having a regional accent (like mine, for example) and being incomprehensible to the general population. i'm not making a plea for recieved pronunciation, just english as it is understood by most people in this country and abroad.

and there is NO WAY that someone with the accents that i am talking about would get a presenting job at the bbc. no way at all.

cazzybabs · 16/09/2006 10:29

I am a teacher and I do make spelling and grammer mistakes. I write loads all the time - I am only human and I am trying to make books while dealing with children and collegues and I don't have very good spelling and grammar at the best of times! Do all of you never ever make a spelling mistake - I bet you do but you have a computer to pick it up. and also I have so many things up in my classroom I look at them everyday so I may well miss errors. I would like someone to point nicely without involving my boss/govenors so I can change it. Isn't that what you would like in your job - if you make a mistake wouldn't you rather a collegue pointed it out rather than your boss!

aitch71 · 16/09/2006 10:32

hahahahah... 'i before e except after c'... i just mis-spelled received
blame dd, who was typing as well.

Original poster

UnquietDad · 16/09/2006 12:32

cazzybabs: Please write out "grammar" and "colleague" three times in your exercise book and take it to the Head! You will get a sticker.

OP posts:

aitch71 · 16/09/2006 12:56

and governor. not that i'm one to talk.

Saturn74 · 16/09/2006 13:04

Headteacher at DS2s primary school didn't even seem to have a basic grasp of grammar and spelling.

She wrote us a letter explaining why she didn't think DS was dyslexic, and why she wouldn't be applying for a statement for him.

There were 14 spelling mistakes in a letter that covered about half a side of A4.

My DH went to great lengths to point out each one when we arranged a subsequent meeting with the school and the LEA -and then comment that he had noticed them even though he was dyslexic!

She said that she was overworked with SEN issues, and had written it in a rush. The LEA representative said it was important that the issues with DS were fully investigated, and that this should never be rushed.

It was a fantastic moment!

(Have not previewed message, so apologies for any grammar/spelling mistooks!)

WideWebWitch · 16/09/2006 13:21

ds was sent home with an incorrect spelling to learn recently. I wrote a polite note saying that I'd taught him the correct spelling. She told ds to tell me she'd had a trying day. I do think she ought to have checked though before she printed it out, copied it and gave it to 27 children to learn.

Original poster

UnquietDad · 16/09/2006 13:41

Good grief, www. That takes the biscuit.

OP posts:

singersgirl · 16/09/2006 13:43

The incorrect hyphen was on a spelling list, too, and I had to go and talk to the teacher; it was "non-descript" (sic). I mean, there isn't even an adjective "descript".....

thewomanwhothoughtshewasahat · 16/09/2006 13:59

we had maths homework last weekend that was at best muddled, but arguably wrong. It asked you to make double digit numbers by adding two numbers together from a list of numbers. It told you how many you could make - and it was wrong. The numbers were, in the books defence, arranged in two rows, and what it meant was add one from the bottom row and one from the top row. but it did not say that. you could get 3 more double digit numbers by adding two that both came from the top row. This was in a commercially produced book. On the one hand it's pedantic of me, but on the other hand this kind of problem solving is at least half about reading and understanding the task you're set. And if the people who produced the book can't even write the task clearly how are you meant to teach kids to read it properly? grrrr.

thewomanwhothoughtshewasahat · 16/09/2006 14:03

thinking about it, maybe it's just preparation for the real world

Blandmum · 16/09/2006 14:09

I'm a teacher and I can't spell. I can spell better than it would seem from my MN postings, and I also have a lot of typos. there is a high probability that I am dyslexic, I have never been diagnosed, as such things were not done when I was a child

I use the computer for putting things on the board and spell check my work. Oddly I can also spell all the scientific words that I need to use

I dare say that there are mnetters who would like to see me tarred and feathered. However, My average performance in classes I worked with last year was an improvement of 50% more progress than could have been expected from their scores on entering my classes. Overall I feal that I worked well with these students and they gained a significant benefit from my teaching.

I would agree that teaching children wrong spellings should be avoided at all costs.

aitch71 · 16/09/2006 14:15

i've never noticed that you spell badly on mumsnet, martianbishop.

Blandmum · 16/09/2006 14:19

You must be either very kind, or very blind. My typos and spelling mistakes are vast in number! Not that long ago I typed that I once had a pet can called ozzy!

aitch71 · 16/09/2006 14:24

ppppfffft, that's a typo, surely? doesn't count on a website.

if, however, you sent DD home with the sentence to complete along the lines of 'the can sat on the ...' i would be at a loss.

Blandmum · 16/09/2006 14:27

I have awful problems with a whole range of spellings, which I do let slip. When kids pick them up, I write them out 3 times on the board, tellign them that I correct their spelling, because I don;t want them to end up like me!

I can spell the words I need to teach them in secondary science

thewomanwhothoughtshewasahat · 17/09/2006 15:27

just did dd's reading with her - a proper reading tree type book - the Digby Rocket series. And yes, you guessed it, grammatical mistake: "in to" instead of "into" - it's just disgraceful.

hovely · 19/09/2006 14:17

I recall back in the mists of time when I was at secondary school my (detested) RE teacher corrected a word which I had spelled correctly!

I wrote 'argument' and he wrote 'arguement', in red pen at the end of my essay, so I had to write it out three times.
I did so, then went to him and showed him. With bad grace he huffily said I was right.
Then at the next parents' evening I left my exercise book turned open to that page, the closest I could get to some kind of revenge.
It still makes my stomach clench with fury today.

Original poster

UnquietDad · 22/09/2006 16:18

dd's teacher has an interesting approach to spelling and punctuation. According to the list of the Y2 syllabus, which we had sent home today, they will be studying the art of "Van Gough".

I assume this is Damon's long lost brother, also known as Badly Spelt Boy.

OP posts:

Celia2 · 22/09/2006 20:46

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

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