Marking policy for spellings in upper KS2 writing

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mystery
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Re: Marking policy for spellings in upper KS2 writing

Post by mystery »

I presume it's a system that teachers / literacy co-ordinators / headteachers / primary advisers have invented though - not the drafters of the new national curriculum. Anyone know the history of this type of policy and why the rule of 3 or 4 is so widespread across primary schools both at KS1 and KS2?
loobylou
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Re: Marking policy for spellings in upper KS2 writing

Post by loobylou »

It's not something I've come across with dd or ds in their primary school.
In reception and yr 1 when they were doing "emergent writing"?? then their spellings were not corrected if they were phonetically correct but they were corrected if they were not phonetically correct.
However since then spellings appear to have been corrected appropriately. They are pretty good spellers though so it might be that I wouldn't have noticed if the corrections were limited to 3 or 4 though I imagine I would have done.
The school seems to be very hot on spelling though (which I love!)
salsa
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Re: Marking policy for spellings in upper KS2 writing

Post by salsa »

Well, I wonder what this teacher was thinking about? Maybe the 10 year old wrote the incorrect word within his 3 correctable mistakes?
My 12 year old son was reading this BBC article this morning, commenting on the absurdity of it all.
"Get your spelling correct or you may get a visit from the police", he told my younger son!
Maybe that'll get them to pay more attention to their spelling? :?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-la ... e-35354061" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Daogroupie
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Re: Marking policy for spellings in upper KS2 writing

Post by Daogroupie »

I have students who get really high marks in shuffled sentences, comprehension, word links, odd one out and multiple choice cloze in CEM. But then they do really badly on missing letter cloze, and spell the antonym and synonym. As there is only one mark per question in CEM they may know the word and be able to pronounce and explain it but if they can't spell it they lose the mark.

As North London falls to CEM school by school (even some of the privates this year) those who had TA's following this policy at their school are at a considerable disadvantage. DG
mystery
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Re: Marking policy for spellings in upper KS2 writing

Post by mystery »

What's a TA? And do you know of schools that don't have this policy then?
Daogroupie
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Re: Marking policy for spellings in upper KS2 writing

Post by Daogroupie »

TA is a teaching assistant. In the schools I have worked in a lot of work is marked by teaching assistants, especially homework and tests.

I know of teachers who think the policy is nonsense and have chosen to ignore it. DG
mystery
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Re: Marking policy for spellings in upper KS2 writing

Post by mystery »

Ah good. I don't think I'll have much luck though. I was discussing this in the playground with my child's class-teacher (newish at the school) and a dragon-like teacher appeared part-way through to cut the discussion short and tell us with a very cross-looking face about the school's policy of only pointing out 3 incorrect spellings in any piece of work. I have never seen this policy written down but it perhaps explains why so many misspellings go unnoticed.

Do you think a teacher could be shot by the head for pointing out more than three?

I could work on the misspellings at home myself if we could see the books regularly during the year. However, we are allowed the literacy books back the following summer and a couple of cursory viewings at parents' evening twice a year.

Teaching assistants marking is a bit dodgy isn't it? They don't even have to have passed that very easy spelling and punctuation test that teachers do? Or in general, are they more literate?!
loobylou
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Re: Marking policy for spellings in upper KS2 writing

Post by loobylou »

mystery wrote:What's a TA? And do you know of schools that don't have this policy then?
My children's school definitely does not. (I'm a governor so have seen the literacy policy). I think most teachers are aware of marking depending on a child - for example with a child with dyslexia they are less likely to point out every single spelling mistake because there is no point in causing distress and demoralisation.... (spell check doesn't like that word!) but in other children they will mark every single spelling mistake.
(They also don't let TAs mark work!)
ToadMum
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Re: Marking policy for spellings in upper KS2 writing

Post by ToadMum »

To be fair to TAs, some have actually had quite 'literate and numerate' careers prior to taking up the role when their children go to school. Rather like nursing auxiliaries of old, though, as a bunch they can be rather mixed (I use this example because through my nursing career I came across the whole range, from the one who would only fold sheets to the one who had trained as an Enrolled Nurse in NZ, who couldn't work as an EN here due to length of training but who taught me an awful lot during the two months I worked with her as a student). Higher Level TAs, who undertake further training, can take classes, but not as a full-time class teacher.
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.Groucho Marx
mystery
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Re: Marking policy for spellings in upper KS2 writing

Post by mystery »

Ah - a literacy policy. Do most schools have one of these? And even if they did and it said no more than 3 spellings, could a teacher be castigated for correcting more than three if that is what the child and parent wanted?
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