One day, however, when I was laughing at a classmate for not being able to spell something, Mrs T blew my mind, "Shakespeare couldn't spell either and you'd do well to remember that Missy."
Whether she just wanted to give more ammunition to my playground tormentor who had spent the whole of my junior school life teasing me for being 'posh' and 'swotty' or she was making a valid point I wasn't sure but I ran through the scenario in my mind.
"Julia, how do you spell government?"
"G O V E R M E N T."
"Don't be silly, girl, you know it has an N in it."
"I know because it comes from the verb to govern but you said that Shakespeare couldn't spell so I thought I'd try to be more like a famous writer."
"Pull your skirt up!"
The sharp slapping sound and imagined sting of my upper thigh brought me back to reality and I was glad for one of the few times in my life that I wasn't a boy, who had to drop their trousers. My imaginary smack was less humiliating because of my gender.
The sharp slapping sound and imagined sting of my upper thigh brought me back to reality and I was glad for one of the few times in my life that I wasn't a boy, who had to drop their trousers. My imaginary smack was less humiliating because of my gender.
When you write often you make mistakes. Despite being good at spelling I expect my blogs have been littered with inaccuracies. Usually these are just typos . I prefer to write quickly and then go back, read, re-read and edit. I'm not quite so good at grammar and some punctuation is a complete mystery. My daughter tells me that the extra space after a full-stop is no longer necessary. Grammar wasn't a large part of the curriculum when I was at school. I can make what I write understandable from copying what I've read but participles could dangle, unnoticed all over my writing. I worry about this. People get very cross about these things.
Michael Rosen had a lively Twitter debate this morning about the identification of 'my' as possessive pronoun. I worried. Had I used 'my' as a possessive pronoun? What is a possessive pronoun, anyway?
It turns out that 'mine' is the possessive pronoun and 'my' is just a pronoun. (Luckily there are some very good grammar Nazi-bloggers out there). I relaxed a little. I would always say, "This blog is mine," Does it matter that I can't name them, if I can use words properly?
Similarly, I wonder if spelling really matters. I know it matters to the angry people on Twitter. Whole swathes of the country are planning to boycot Waterstone's in Walthamstow because, "how dare a bookshop not be promoting good literacy!"
A typo missed by the proof reader but wait, what about the missing apostrophe? Along with Sainsburys, Waterstones decided to drop its apostrophe in 2012 but have still to change the signage on their shops.
Does it matter? We know what the sign means. Shakespeare couldn't spell. To be fair to him all spelling was phonetic until as recently as 1800. When researching my family tree I found a Mary Sell or Mary Sele or Mary Cell, or Mary Cele and they were all the same person. Even educated people like vicars or the keepers of parish registers couldn't agree.
Not being able to agree is very common when people are talking about spelling. Does it matter if a four year old writes 'carot'? What if the teacher writes it like that on the board after that child identifies the sounds for her? I don't know the answer to that but I know that everyone will have an opinion and will be determined that they are right. I expect that there are as many pieces of research showing that it doesn't matter as there are showing that it is vital. Teaching is hard.
Today, I was teaching Sammy Fain's songs from Alice in Wonderland. The words were up on the whiteboard.
"Miss, that word is wrong."
"What word?"
"The one with the red line underneath."
"You mean Slithy Toves? Does anyone know what the slithy toves are?"
They all agreed that those were made-up words.
"What about a Caucus race? Is that a real thing."
They all agreed. Caucus was a real word and they all thought they knew what it meant. Voices were raised.
"It's a flower."
"No it's not it means being careful."
"Don't be silly. Our upstairs phone is caucus."
Oh, and I thought it was a convocation. Awkward.
Michael Rosen had a lively Twitter debate this morning about the identification of 'my' as possessive pronoun. I worried. Had I used 'my' as a possessive pronoun? What is a possessive pronoun, anyway?
It turns out that 'mine' is the possessive pronoun and 'my' is just a pronoun. (Luckily there are some very good grammar Nazi-bloggers out there). I relaxed a little. I would always say, "This blog is mine," Does it matter that I can't name them, if I can use words properly?
Similarly, I wonder if spelling really matters. I know it matters to the angry people on Twitter. Whole swathes of the country are planning to boycot Waterstone's in Walthamstow because, "how dare a bookshop not be promoting good literacy!"
A typo missed by the proof reader but wait, what about the missing apostrophe? Along with Sainsburys, Waterstones decided to drop its apostrophe in 2012 but have still to change the signage on their shops.
Does it matter? We know what the sign means. Shakespeare couldn't spell. To be fair to him all spelling was phonetic until as recently as 1800. When researching my family tree I found a Mary Sell or Mary Sele or Mary Cell, or Mary Cele and they were all the same person. Even educated people like vicars or the keepers of parish registers couldn't agree.
Not being able to agree is very common when people are talking about spelling. Does it matter if a four year old writes 'carot'? What if the teacher writes it like that on the board after that child identifies the sounds for her? I don't know the answer to that but I know that everyone will have an opinion and will be determined that they are right. I expect that there are as many pieces of research showing that it doesn't matter as there are showing that it is vital. Teaching is hard.
Today, I was teaching Sammy Fain's songs from Alice in Wonderland. The words were up on the whiteboard.
"Miss, that word is wrong."
"What word?"
"The one with the red line underneath."
"You mean Slithy Toves? Does anyone know what the slithy toves are?"
They all agreed that those were made-up words.
"What about a Caucus race? Is that a real thing."
They all agreed. Caucus was a real word and they all thought they knew what it meant. Voices were raised.
"It's a flower."
"No it's not it means being careful."
"Don't be silly. Our upstairs phone is caucus."
Oh, and I thought it was a convocation. Awkward.
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