I am going to start in the middle of our story (don’t worry, I will get back to the beginning and share the whole story with you at some point), but for now it is probably enough to know that I am homeschooling both my son (2nd grade) and daughter (6th grade).

We are in the first few weeks of homeschool for my son and it will be a learning process for us both. My goal is to be especially attentive to how he responds to my teaching style. It will be different from what he had in the classroom. It goes without saying that I want to do what is best for my child, so listening with my “third ear” is important. (Your “third ear” is what senses what your child is not telling you. It senses underlying problems, not what is on the surface.)

For my daughter, we have always had a pretest at the beginning of the week for Spelling. There are never grades given for pretests. I feel pretests are a valuable tool for both she and I, because it allows us to quickly see what she already knows and areas she needs to focus on to improve. To my knowledge, my son has never had a “PRETEST” before, and as soon as he saw the word “test” on the paper, he panicked. I immediately noticed change in his body langua

ge. His shoulders slumped, his eyes filled with tears. I quickly realized that if I did not change the word “PRETEST” into something different, he would miss the point of this non-graded assessment.

The first word that came to mind was “Pre-Check”. I printed out his new “Spelling Pre-Check” and handed the paper to him. Instantly, all the world was right again. He read the title out loud and a smile came to his face. His momma-educator is relieved that changing out one word would make a notable difference.

In your class, what minor _________________ (fill in the blank) are you able to change, that will take out the worry, stress, fear, and anxiety in your student?