It was 3:45 when I sat down with the boy to start his spelling test. I knew we were in trouble when his first word was spelled 9ray, and I gently reminded him to try to write all of his letters the same size. The consternation on his face as he struggled through the first half of the test switched to resignation, and tears began to build in his eyes as we continued through the second half. We finished the test, and I looked at the list of words my son had stumbled on, among them: grace, mercy, pray, obey... Words for an eight-year-old.
When we end the test, I tell him to close his test book. I'm not going to grade tests this afternoon--its too late in the day. He's morose, looking at the page and knowing that the words aren't right, but not sure why or how to fix them. I tell him that he'll have a chance tomorrow, at the beginning of the day, to look at the test and to fix any words that he wants. He brightens. He leaves the table to move on to his chores, relieved that he'll have another chance to make things better.
The smallest amounts of mersey can make such a big impact.
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