A SURVEY of the most common spelling and grammatical mistakes seen by primary school teachers, has revealed the same basic mistakes being made in classrooms across Australia.

The survey, conducted by Pilot Pen Australia and TikTok primary school teacher Lil’ Miss Sunshinee, revealed that more than 50 per cent of the teachers who responded said that the most common mistake kids make was ‘failing to put a capital letter at the start of a sentence’, followed by ‘forgetting to put a full stop at the end’ (21 per cent).

The two other most common mistakes seen by teachers were writing ‘alot’ instead of ‘a lot’ and ‘definitely misspelled as defiantly.”

“These are very simple and common grammatical and punctuation errors that we teachers see every day,” said Lil’ Miss Sunshinee.Many of her followers agree with many commenting on her video post, sharing their experiences:

“My year 6 students always spelling excited exited,” said Emily.

“My kids always forget to do finger spaces, so the words are all together, and I have to chop the sentence into sections,” said Becky.

“I love the ‘your and you’re’ and ‘there, they’re’ and their mistakes,” said Madi.

When asked how parents can help encourage their children with correct spelling and grammar, Lil’ Miss Sunshinee said: “Making and correcting mistakes is how kids learn best. Parents can help at home by carving out a regular time to read story books with their children and limiting screen time which is often where children can pick up bad spelling and punctuation habits, with so many abbreviations and slang words being seen and then copied.”

Pilot Pen Australia head of marketing, Jarrad Murray, who commissioned the survey said: “We always see an uptake of our erasable pens and markers when a new school term starts. Kids love to use them because they can erase their mistakes which builds confidence.”

Lil’ Miss Sunshinee has 39.8k followers on TikTok where she shares her thoughts, tips and daily life as a primary school teacher. Visit: www.pilotpen.com.au