Wrong spelling on classroom label

[toastedmarshmallow]

Whilst in dd's Y5 classroom for parents' evening I noticed that one of the drawers was labelled 'stationary'.

Not sure what to do, worried I will look an arse if I point it out to the teacher. I know a TA, should I tell her or is that just passing the buck? I have made sure my dd knows the difference (without telling her why)

Can't think of the right way to say it without causing offence!

Past, can you imagine their reaction! Maybe as an end out year gift.

I do sympathise - both with you and the teacher.

I do get the cringe of misspellings on 'learning prompts' in class & spelling lists. I think things like that (unlike MN posts) do need a bit more thought - double checking that facts/ worked examples are correct.

But mistakes do happen.

As someone said above toast....if this is all you have to worry about with the school you're pretty lucky.

We had christmas (all lower case) 3 years running at a CofE school rated outstanding by the Church of England.

I just surmise the CofE has abandoned their former support of the capitalized proper noun.

Think I might just leave it, we all make mistakes!

Last year I wrote a tricky word on the board (an ie word) and the best writer in my class copied it incorrectly. I did have to sneakily check in a dictionary before I told her though!

we all make mistakes!
We do indeed, and we are much better at spotting the mistakes of others than our own.

Part of the problem is the senselessness of the spellings of so many English words. It makes people nervous, and nervousness leads to mistakes.

And it is not because English is a mixture of Germanic and Latinate words, with some others as well, that its spelling is so chaotic. It was at least four times times deliberately messed up:

1. Early scribes substituting o for u, as in month, because they disliked having to write a succession of short downwards strokes, as u would get with a sensible spelling of 'munth'.
2. Court scribes in the 15th C substituting ea for short and long e, as in 'tread, treat', because they were cross about having to switch from French to English.
3. Printers adding extra letters to make words longer in order to earn more money (kindnes - kindness) or because they spoke no English and made lots of mistakes (build, friend, guard).
4. Johnson making consonant doubling irregular, as in 'merry - very' because he did not like to make Latinate words conform to the English spelling system. He is also chiefly responsible for the utterly pointless standardisation of the likes of 'there/their' and 'stationary/ ...ery'.

All the above are simply man made stupidities, but which continue to ensure that learning to read and write English takes a ridiculously long time.

As a teacher who can't spell I would welcome a polite and friendly -"Hope you don't mind my saying but that's spelled wrong".

In a classroom all signs should be correctly spelled as they are an example to the children and they might have cause to copy them.

When I was in my probationary year the teacher I shared with (in her late 50s) explained that my spelling was her generation's fault as there had been a lack of focus on spelling back in the early 90s and so many of us who are otherwise able can't spell! I use it as an example to the children e.g. I check in a dictionary if I'm not sure and explain to them why.

When our local authority overseer was visiting our school she asked me to correct the after-school club's whiteboard (near my room) where they had misspelled the school name. She said it bothered her every time she walked past it. I hadn't noticed it.

A bit late to the thread. On one hand I can see that most of the time context can make meaning clear even if the words are spelled incorrectly.

However, I remember reading a thread about a TV programme episode on a different forum several years ago. A poster refered to the 'hole seen' when she actually meant 'whole scene'. I can't remember the entire discussion, but it did cause a bit of confusion as both kind of made sense.

Last year my DS2s classroom drawers had the same error, I couldn't bring myself to point it out but I am interested to see if it is still there. It doesn't worry me as the teaching is fabulous.

There is a card and stationery shop near me and on the big shop sign it says 'Cards and Stationary', now that really does irritate me every time I pass it.