A lot...it's two words not one!!

Sometimes I want to stand in front of the classroom and scream. It seems the simplest spelling words often pose the most perplexing problems for my students. I try to tackle this early in the school year with a list of the most common misspelled words. For most students, that list just seems to get shuffled somewhere into the realm of the unknown. We have week after week of spelling tests, but all my effort always appears to be in vain.

I read journals with the all too familiar witch instead of which would make one wonder how these children ever get ready for Halloween. I have seen all kinds of spelling. However, the funniest to date would have to be a student in my sixth grade class who spelled contradict as he thought it sounded...countrydick. As I graded that paper, I could not help but laugh out loud. Thirty-six little eyeballs turned toward the laughter and eighteen mouths asked simultaneously, "What's so funny?". With the answer on the tip of my tongue, but unsure how to tell sixth grade students that someone just wrote "country dick" as the correct spelling for #20, I had to come up with a quick lie. Lucky for me the bell rang.

This joke was just to good to pass up as I shared it with the teacher next to me. She in turn shared it with another teacher. A good laugh like that is hard to come by. It's what makes the top ten list on the late shows. Too bad I hadn't thought of that before I handed the test back.