Any secondary English teachers around?

[oliviafrombolivia]

I have a question, if anyone could help me would be very grateful. My daughter is in year 9 in a comp. She submitted a piece of homework on a book she is reading in class. She printed the work out and left a further copy by our printer, so I read it. I noticed a howler of a spelling mistake in it, I mentioned it to her when she was back from school - and (jokingly) admonished her for not checking her spellings. She got the homework back after being marked, the teacher had not picked up on the spelling mistake. Is this normal? I know in primary school spellings are only corrected if they are core spellings and have already been covered in the syllabus .. I don't want to be precious if there is reasoning behind it, but it has disturbed me slightly.

thank you for your reply Hesterton, much appreciated. It was a discussion piece on a character in Of Mice and Men, so it may well have been that the teacher was looking for the things you say. She doesn't make many spelling errors though..

I am a secondary English teacher. I probably correct a third of spellings, if that.

I do not always mark for spelling.

It is not good to highlight every spelling mistake.

At DS's school they encourage the children to use correct spellings but teachers are more interested in marking the content. The boys' imagination and love for writing is more important at the moment and the teachers don't correct all of the spelling mistakes. They have certain pieces of work when they are clearly instructed to take care of the spellings.

thanks all, very helpful.

Actually the reality is that the marking that English teachers have to do is so overwhelming that they can't possibly mark all of it properly, esp in State Schools with large classes. It is far better that you accept this as a fact and do a bit of your own marking, particularly focussing on your DCs spelling, grammar and punctuation.

Great advice here. I think it's great when parents get involved with their kids and go over homework with them...it's in everyone's interests that they do! I tried to mark for everything, it's exhausting and I'm not sure that it demoralises the kids, it's more that they turn off and don't bother reading it all...infuriating! But I am o,d school and find the idea of marking Writing and ignoring the spellings very hard, unless it's a comprehension or a boring summary, which is clearly focuses on the precision of their reading. If she knows that you read her work as well, I'm sure it will motivate and encourage her.