I've moved this up again. It's a tribute to those people who still understand that spelling, grammar and factual accuracy are important. Those of you from outside teaching may have thought this was obvious. Those of you who teach will know that it is not.
You may notice that I am having trouble getting the words into neat columns. I've used the £nbsp tag to generate the spaces but when I switch to 'compose' mode they all disappear (although oddly, none of the other HTML tags do.)
Incidently the detectives amongst you will be narrowing down the list of possible subjects that I might teach. No doubt 'English' was crossed off long ago and 'I.T.' will now be joining it.
Heroes of Spelling:
WORD HERO
Independant Anonymous
Discreetly Karrde
Existence Anonymous
Definitely Dan (and Rosey)
Exciting Anonymous
Coherent Anonymous
Dependence Anonymous
Ecstasy Anonymous
(The Rolls Royce website http://100.rolls-royce.com/products/view.jsp?id=363 thinks it should be 'Ecstacy' but I'll trust my commentators)
Cannabis Hilary
Academies (You can tell I didn't attend one)Pen
Incompetence Dieremie
Humorous Anonymous
Bureaucratic Anonymous
Barbecue Anonymous
Veteran Hilary
Sufficiently Pen
Persistent Pen
Edinburgh Anon
Indefinitely Sarah P
vituperative Domino
I'm not going to attempt the feeble excuse that the spellchecker doesn't seem to work. It's pretty poor if I can't even manage to look up a few words in the dictionary.
Please continue to point out any spelling or grammatical mistakes you spot in this blog so that I can correct them. What hope is there for the kids if the teachers can't be bothered to learn how to spell?
ps Thanks to whoever pointed out that a spellchecker is something that witches use.
Rescuers of Grammar
I asked Kyle from Year 11 what his views were on the teaching of grammar; in particular the importance of sentence structure, parts of speech and the different verb tenses. His considered opinion was:
"They don't learn you nuthin' here."
The fact that my own grammar is often wrong merely indicates incompetence on my part, which nowadays is not considered a fault. (In fact it's often the quickest way to a position on the Senior Management Team). I learnt long ago in teaching, that what is said is far more important than what is actually done.
My Version Correct Version Rescuer
I am sat I am sitting Pen
Absolve Abdicate Rich
Factual Errors
Doggy Matters:
Chocolate Brown is not a recognised colour for a Bull Mastiff nor indeed for many other pedigree breeds such as the Labrador. Thanks to Syb
16 comments:
I had failures like you punish me for my correct spelling. I'm glad I earn twice as much as you will ever do.
Presumably that should be "incorrect" spelling. There is more to life than what you earn, and more to life than being able to spell accurately too.
Good evening Mr Chalk
I've found your site via "The Policeman's Blog"
Being married to a member of SMT at a very deprived inner city school in a very, very deprived area of the country, I have every sympathy with you.
When she gets home from work (It's nearly 10pm now) I'm sure she'll enjoy reading your blog, if she's got the energy.
I've put you on my sidebar to remind me to keep popping back and hope that some of my readers visit you and pass comment.
PS - now every classroom seems to have an interactive whiteboard (How come they can be called whiteboards, but blackboards had to be called chalkboards?) what do you throw at the kids who aren't paying attention? Board rubbers bouncing off heads used to give out a resounding ring on some kids in my class!
Fascinating blog, Mr Chalk. [Or should that be 'Sir'? :-) ]
Anyway, well done. I salute anyone who's happy to 'tell it like it is'.
I'm looking forward to reading your book when it comes out.
PS Spelling alert! - in your June 23rd entry, 'coherant' should of course be spelled 'coherent'.
So please take a black mark and several detentions (or whatever it was that we poor grammar school kids would have had foisted upon us for similar misdemeanours back in the dark and dismal 1970s...)
Sigh.
www.dictionary.com
(Although it probably spells in 'Merikan)
what a dickhead the anonymous tosspot at the top of these comments is.
teachers are there to punish people for their spelling errors you simpleton. it's the fact that they can't do that any more which is problematic.
as for how much you earn, if you earn twice as much as the average teacher (i'm guessing that puts you on 60 grand...bully for you), i earned about 30 times as much as you last year and i owe every penny i rake in from my admittedly lucrative bond trading job to my maths teacher (mr mercer, hello if you're reading this) for forcing me, albeit against my will at first, to realise that i could do maths, and, actually, i was quite good at it. even though i didn't want to.
ooh, the teachers told me off for spelling wrongly. ooh...look at me...i'm better than they are...you whinign twat.
NB mr mercer, if you ARE reading this i don't literally mean i owe you every penny. but you know what i mean. is it true you shagged stacey wall by the way?
I feel like I have been named and shamed (and semi-famous) by what was not a spelling mistake, just a typo, correct letters but slightly in the wrong order.....honest mister :-)
Can somebody tell me what the difference is between a spelling mistake and a typo? Anyone who bothers to check their work before handing it in (so to speak) should be able to minimise these errors.
As for me, my spelling's always prefect. Thank you.
Dear Anonymous(the one before this post),
I bet you spent a long time reading over what you had typed so as not to look a fool with a simple mistake, didn't you?
I will be all grown up about your comment and reply with - \/
"incompetance ": oh dear.
There isn't HTML for tab as such but you can use "& nbsp;" (without the space between the & and the rest)as a spacer. It's a really small space though so you needto use loads.
Judging by your attempt at Latin in an earlier post,I don't think that you teach Classics either!
(Mind you, Classics in your school sounds like it would include the study of 'Neighbours')
For your HTML spacing you need to include the semi-colon at the end of the . That will actually provide the spacing and not add it to the text.
Al
Please tell me that the spelling error in your second sentence, "spelling, grammer and factual accuracy", is deliberately ironic.
I'd recommend learning how to use the table, tr and td tags - basic example using some of your post
<table>
<tr><td>Independant</td><td>Anonymous</td></tr>
<tr><td>Discreetly</td><td>Karrde</td></tr>
</table>
Hopefully I've added enough <s to please blogger or the example may have disappeared.
i have gone through this blog. i found it really interesting fot my job and my future career
study and earn
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