'Distressing' Spell Tests Banned

[The_DADDY (2) 10]

Whitminster Endowed Church of England Primary School, near Stroud, in Gloucestershire, has dropped the traditional spelling lists for homework.

 

The new policy was revealed in a newsletter to parents which said many of the school's 105 pupils found the activity "unnecessarily distressing".

 

Now i know for a fact this is all a load of crap but some will still think its a great idea and they will still think its a great idea when the next generation of kids cant spell to save their lives:roll:

 

Full Story

 

There is no substitiue for old fashions teaching and pushing kids to better themselves. This namby pamby rubbish is wrecking our kids...

[Snook 10]

Quite the none-story, really

 

ONE school decided to scrap one bit of homework. I'm sure many schools don't do this anyway to start with. Also, its not like they aren't being taught it anyway, they've just decided to scrap the weekly tests because they have noticed that they didn't give a true result.

 

"The spelling patterns will continue to be taught explicitly in the classroom and assessed as part of the normal marking by the teacher."

[Rich 12]

I agree.

 

I get a lot of stick on here for being pedantic about spelling, but sue me, I'm a perfectionist when it comes to my own spelling, so I expect perfection in others.

[The_DADDY (2) 10]

Quite the none-story, really

 

ONE school decided to scrap one bit of homework. I'm sure many schools don't do this anyway to start with. Also, its not like they aren't being taught it anyway, they've just decided to scrap the weekly tests because they have noticed that they didn't give a true result.

 

"The spelling patterns will continue to be taught explicitly in the classroom and assessed as part of the normal marking by the teacher."

 

Oh right.

A none-story?

Thats why its in the papers, in the tv on the ther web then is it.

[alchresearch 215]

Spelling lists are sometimes just tests of memory.

 

Well exactly. That's how we learn things, by memorising them.

 

If I'm asked any single digit multiplication I can come up with the answer straight away and 'see' the times table chart in my head.

[alex3659 11]

speling tests are very importent , if it wasent for them we wood all be struggeling now .

[Chopsie 10]

I know the subject of being able to spell and construct sentences properly is a bit of a hot potato on here at times, but alchresearch is dead right.

 

We're never really taught to spell - we are taught to read, and by reading we learn how to spell. Personally, I think the decline in reading is more than just a little responsible for the decline in standards of grammar and spelling.

[alchresearch 215]

Learning things "parrot fashion" isn't for everyone, but it is for the majority.

 

I was taught that if you studied something three times (a phone number or a name) you'd remember it.

[Ouija 10]

I enjoyed spelling tests at school (as much as I could enjoy anything school related anyway. So I think they work for some. I remember other children struggling at school and hating the tests though. So it's nothing new. It seems there are new rules every new school year. One year they have one method of teaching, the next year it's something else. The only thing they don't seem to have is consistency. I never really understood why they keep changing things.

[shims 10]

"The new policy was revealed in a newsletter to parents which said many of the school's 105 pupils found the activity "unnecessarily distressing".

 

Diddums.

 

Actually I found that learning chunks of Shakespeare to be recited in front of an old battleaxe of an English teacher to be "unnecessarily distressing" at the time but I still managed to go on.

 

Children nowadays need to be taught spelling more than ever partly because of just how many bad examples they see on a daily basis (and so few good, if we are to believe that many of them don't read much at all).

 

Text messages, emails and other casual communications are often and deliberately spelled badly and I don't know how many times I've saved in-depth articles from the internet which have needed to be edited afterwards for numerous spelling errors.

 

In the days of the printed page only, I found that the vast majority of spelling tended to be correct.

[HarmOKnee 10]

I know the subject of being able to spell and construct sentences properly is a bit of a hot potato on here at times, but alchresearch is dead right.

 

We're never really taught to spell - we are taught to read, and by reading we learn how to spell. Personally, I think the decline in reading is more than just a little responsible for the decline in standards of grammar and spelling.

 

I agree reading is important in learning how to spell. I've always read books and I bought loads of books for my son when he was younger. It was only when he became a teenager that he decided reading was boring, which I put down to peer pressure. At least he had a good start and he's actually quite good with his spelling & grammar now.

[lauren84 11]

We got raspberries blown at us if we got less than 5.

 

Mind you the least I got was 9 1/2 out of 10. They gave us 1/2 mark if we missed a capital letter! I cried!

 

We used to have mental arithmetics as well!

 

This was in Junior school.