Y7 Eng: Teacher's remark in book...

[ampere]

'Great discription. Try not to say to much at the beggining'

This is at the 'top performing comp in the county'. Not that that should really make any difference, I grant you, except the school's 'reputation' should allow them to be fairly selective regarding the standard of their teaching staff!

Frankly, I am aghast. AM I a billion years behind the time assuming that a secondary school ENGLISH teacher should be able to spell such basic words?

yes becaroo how can teachers be expected to drink their tea, plan their strikes and book their holidays if they have to mark something.

Vespasian More of my cups of tea end up cold and untouched now I am back at work teaching than they did when I was looking after a newborn, and that is saying something!

Maybe you don't organise your time properly.

I am only joking I am a teacher, I always drink my brews hot though

Just realised I put who's not whose. I NEVER do that - I'm tired from (actual) marking!

OK, settle, you lot!

The facts:

I was sufficiently shocked that I OP'ed this.

People who know about these things suggested this work could well have been 'peer reviewed'. I had never heard of this but yes, that seems entirely possible and yes, I have no problem with that.

Yes, I have a friend who is a qualified teacher whose standard of English is so poor I hope she isn't teaching your children.

Because of this fact I had a horrible sinking feeling that it was possible my DS's school employed teachers with such poor standards, despite being a school that prides itself on its academic achievement.

At no stage have I said 'the teacher is crap, all teachers are crap' have I?

It could almost be argued that in asking DCs to peer review other DCs work, not just produce the work, the school are trying to develop the critical faculty that prevents these DCs, as adults, drawing the silly conclusions that some teachers above appear to have drawn.

I think that is a staggeringly bad idea for so many reasons....

I am not a teacher of course,just a parent, so what do I know?

It isn't an optional thing really becaroo

From the National Strategy website

Not all teachers are bad (and I didnt say they were) but if you can't spell and can't use grammar correctly what the hell are you doing teaching english??????

"Peer assessment enables children to give each other valuable feedback so they learn from and support each other."

Hmm. I wonder how valuable the feedback from someone who hasn't mastered the material is to someone who hasn't mastered the material?

You don't just get them to swap books and write the first thing that comes into their heads. It is a structured activity. I might use it when teaching about graphs for example. I would give a checklist:
Are the axes labelled?
Are there units?
Are all the point accurately drawn?
etc

You can do self-assessment as well, but I find there is greater scrutiny of someone else's work often. I think it's like proof-reading your own writing. You miss mistakes you have made - you just sort of gloss over them.

I like it.

I agree TheFallenMadonna where it is used wisely and in a structured way, peer review is very helpful to students- both the marker and the markee are learning, IF the marking is done in a purposeful way, against the criteria.
I know markee is not a real word btw
Sadly, sounds like it maybe wasn't done brilliantly in Op's dc's classroom. However, it's early days if they have just started year 7.

Agree. And relax.

People just seem determined to think that teachers use a tool because they can't be bothered to work. It seems alien to some people to think that perhaps teachers may do something because it helps their pupils.

My ds (11) has some History homework about the Romans, but all through the worksheet it talks about Roman's.... I'm always going on at him about rogue apostrophes, but when the teacher does it too, what hope have I got???

You might want to gently point that one out - that worksheet might get used for every Year 7 class every year!

I'm afraid that I'd make 's plurals an instant GCSE fail, like the list of things that instantly fail a driving test. There's no excuse for it, ever, and using an apostrophe to make a plural isn't some "oh, I generalised" or "well it's sometimes right", it means you're spraying apostrophes around at random in Mexican Target Practice fashion. It is tempting to write it's as a possessive if you don't understand the history of the apostrophe, and the rule "no apostrophes in pronouns" isn't 100% right (although people unable to use them correctly are I suppose less likely to trip over one's ones). But to form plurals? There's no excuse.

I remember on my NQT year, as a 35 year old, with O levels (A in English lang), correcting the board of someone for whom I was doing cover. She had written 'should of'. She was an English teacher. She saw when she came back that I'd corrected the board, and had a go at me. I pointed out her mistake, and explained that it should have been 'should've' as the 've was an abbreviation of have. She flounced out to talk to her HoD, only to slink back, tail firmly between legs, to mutter sorry at me. She was 23 and had GCSEs.

I have noticed that colleagues with O levels generally do spell much better than those with GCSEs.

"it should have been 'should've' "

It should have been "should have" in anything but direct reported speech.

Whatever...I was trying to explain what she had written. My inner pedant hasn't had enough caffeine yet this morning.

I find myself having to explain the rules governing apostrophes to university students of English who have come to us with an A in every subject. To be fair, I am not convinced this means their teachers have never explained it: it occasionally comes as a shock to me to find out how little they take in or bother to remember of what I explain. I suppose the only answer would be drill, drill, drill.