Teaching assistant's spelling error in reading diary?

[susannahmoodie]

Wwyd? DS is in reception and has brought his reading diary home. It has a comment from the TA that says :"Well done [ds' name] you new all the tricky words and I can tell you have been practising your numbers as you new 1-20 too".

I'm not teacher bashing- I'm one myself! But not sure of primary protocol here.....

I think that's a pretty thoughtful comment to write in a reading record book- mentioning maths he had done at another time.

I think she is either dyslexic or fairly illiterate, as this is not the kind of mistake someone writing quickly would make (in my opinion). I wouldn't bother saying something because I don't think this kind or error will hurt a reception age child; if the TA is dyslexic, mentioning the mistake won't help her to learn the spelling.

That is pretty poor tbh. I think I would mention it (or correct it) I'm surprised at people saying it's ok. It's a very basic word, and to get it wrong twice isn't great.

I'd not only correct it, but tell the main class teacher it's not remotely good enough. We are not talking about "tricky" words here. I cannot quite believe the complacency on this thread. This is basic illiteracy.

I'd leave it. It's not as though the kid can read it anyway. And it was a very considerate, well thought out comment rather than a generic Well Done.

She could be dyslexic, she could've been writing while talking to Ptolemy and trying to cope with Artemis sobbing and dripping snot into her shoulder while Persephone screams on the floor. Or whatever.

Really wouldn't get worked up about this, the teacher will probably notice and she's better placed to have a word.

You know, TAs are human, and guess what? Sometimes they make mistakes!

Occasionally you get a TA who isn't a great speller...just like you might get any other person in any other walk of life who isn't a great speller!

I'm a primary teacher and have a fantastic TA working with me. She's very young, full of energy, has great ideas, is extremely creative and the children absolutely adore her. She can't spell for toffee though and sometimes does make mistakes in the children's books. That to me is a tiny price to pay for having such a fantastic person in my classroom.

I ora what's the point in her writing it then?
So Paris, capital of Sweden.

It's for the parents. It's so they can then say "ooh, Caractacus, look Ms Whatever says you were so good at your reading blah blah". They can make a fuss and it gives them a concrete example of something their child is doing well at.
Thought that was quite obvious, tbh.

Scarlet this is not someone who is not a great speller. This is not someone who rushes and makes silly errors. This is someone without a basic knowledge of spelling. In my opinion.
so if a teacher or ta thought Paris was the capital of Sweden and happily mentioned it in passing to the children every time it came up that wouldn't be an issue I assume.

Well, yes, of course it would be an issue Stealth , but not a big one! If I heard my TA telling the children in our class that Paris was the capital of Sweden, then I'd have a quiet word with her. But I'd not make a big deal of it, it's a mistake.

This TA might be a terrible speller, or she might have just made a one off mistake. In quite a few of your posts you have made spelling or punctuation errors, and I know that an Internet forum doesn't really compare to a child's reading diary, but it goes to show how easy it is to make mistakes! I make plenty myself!

How would you suggest the op deals with this?

Apologies I thought you were suggesting as others have that it doesn't matter and the op leaves it.
I'm sure I have made typos and errors by I know I have a basic grasp of spelling and grammar.

I don't think nobody said "it doesn't matter", Stealth.
How could you know she doesn't have "a basic grasp of spelling and grammar", but just made a silly mistake?

Of course it would be a issue if she keeps making same sort of mistakes numerous times, but you don't know that yet.

Ok in my opinion.
If you know how to spell basic words it takes no more effort to spell them right.
Once could have been a slip, the manual equivalent to pressing a key on the keyboard and it not registering. Twice to me implies strongly that that is how she spells it.
In my opinion.

I agree with Stealth. Once is excusable as a mistake in a hurry (although I agree it's not the kind of word you might misspell by mistake). To get it wrong twice suggests that it's either carelessness or poor literacy and that's a bad example for a TA to set.

TAs are there to support learning - they should have at least the basics themselves.

I think it's much better to make a spelling mistake and show that you are human and too many children are scared to make mistakes.

I was scribing for a secondary child the other day and wrote the completely wrong word (gravity instead of thrust ) because I was trying to write , listen to him and keep an eye on the rest of the students whilst another one was standing next to me asking for help.
The student pointed it out and I apologised and crossed it out and modified it.

Your TA was probably sat in the corner with a class of. 30 chatting around her and trying to write in everyone's diaries.

new / knew are homophones in lots of British accents, probably most. When writing and typing quickly, verbal people often transcribe the wrong homophone. It is not a spelling mistake in the sense that the person does not know how to spell the word they're writing.

It's a transcription error, and the limited research suggests that doing it twice is more rather than less likely, due to recent recall. It is almost certainly related to aphasia, although obviously it's very mild form, but still like most things only the most rude and uncharitable would assume the problem was one of intelligence.

Well put, fred!

Correct it in pencil if you must. I'm a TA and wouldn't mind. I'd be kicking myself though!

I'm a TA. Would parents be happy to have their mistakes corrected in reading diaries, because I see absolute howlers every day?!?

I pride myself on my spelling ability, but when I am rushing to get things done and note things down in the reading diaries AND reading records, sometimes I slip up, or something might not be very good, grammatically . I like to think parents will not take offence, and recognise that it was probably done in a hurry and is not a reflection of my general educational ability!

I would be pretty pleased if a TA corrected my spelling; I would think it was amusing and a little bit impressive, as I am quite careful.

However, parents aren't expected to be able to spell, but a teacher or TA is supposed to be literate. (By the way, I already weighed in as one of the people who wouldn't bother to correct this TA.)

Yes, TAs are supposed to be literate. TAs are supposed to be an awful lot of things for a minimum wage job. If you are lucky as a TA then your class teacher/manager will spot the things you are good at and use those skills to everyone's benefit. The TA in the OP could use 'practising' correctly but not 'new'. I'd be more intrigued rather than dismayed.

Is this definitely TA and not a parent helper?

There is always one parent every year that just loves to find a typo or spelling mistake and lord it over you. It's such a pathetic thing to do. "Oooh look at me, I'm so much smarter than the teacher." Grow up.

We are all much better at spotting the spelling mistakes of others, and we also all regularly make mistakes. Many people think their spelling is better than it actually is.

I recently had a letter from someone who claimed to be a really good speller. It contained two mistakes.

The spelling police should learn to be a little more compassionate.
Getting heterographs like new/know wrong never impedes understanding, any more than their identical pronunciations do in speech.

They are nothing but a ploy to make English spelling more difficult than need be, and they do he job. Picking the wrong heterograph is the most common English spelling mistake.

They could all have just one spelling, like thousands of other words with several meanings (mean, lean, sound, ground, found....) if the educated elite was interested in enabling more people to write well. - But they don't care a fig for that. They like to keep their superiority.

To anyone who thinks that spelling mistakes are rare:
www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/700-uk-companies-didnt-check-6868539

Daily Mirror, London, Nov 20

The 700 UK companies that didn't check their spellings when they were registered

Oh do quit with that Masha, you can't just change a language, they're evolved not invented. The "educated elite" would be the least of your problems; everyone else would laugh at the new fangled nonsense and keep on doing what they were doing all their lives. Like when we changed to kg - the "educated elite" can work perfectly well in kg, but your average punter still thinks in lb and oz. The midwives and HVs may weigh babies in kg, kg may be the simpler system - but I've yet to see a baby announcement saying Jonathan Edward born yesterday 3.8kg!

OP, maybe this time leave it, and if she makes the same mistake on another day try to find a tactful way to mention it? TAs would something like "To save potential embarrassment - knew not new" be okay with you? Because it would be embarrassing if she put it wrong on a wall display or something.

Not because there's anything bad about making a mistake, or it necessarily makes her dreadful at her job. We can all have blind spots about words. So she can learn and get it right in future. If I found out I'd been making a consistent error in my job I know I would be grateful to the person pointing it out, and rather pissed off with the people who'd noticed and not told me.

The kids need to be seeing it correct to learn, even if most of them aren't at that stage yet in reception these things trickle in. The TA may well be helping correct children's spelling in their work too, how many times will that error be allowed to go through uncorrected if she doesn't realise?