The Dirigible Balloon
Poetry for Children

Spelling Test

Listen to Fi read her poem ...
My score out of ten was a piddly two
cos the teacher said ‘toilet’ and I wrote down ‘loo’.
When she called out ‘peculiar’, I jotted down ‘odd’.
When she said, “Write down poke, please.” I noted down ‘prod’.

My teacher looked over it later and said
(whilst looking confused and scratching her head),
“I don’t understand it, this test is absurd!
Why not just write down the words that you heard?”

“I couldn’t spell those, so I wrote some I could.
They mean the same thing, are they not just as good?”
She said that they weren’t and that, on the next test,
I should try a bit harder, at least have a guess.

Well, I tried that the next week and got them all wrong!
My brain and right-spellings just don’t get along.
In future, I’ll stick to the way I know best
and just write down words I can spell in a test.

About the Writer


Fi Calvert

Fi is a primary school teacher by day and a poet by night. She had two poems commended in the YorkMix Poems for Children Competition 2021 and has had a poem about a tardigrade published in The Caterpillar. She loves to write poetry for children in the hope they might relate, laugh or both. Her favourite poems to write are inspired by funny or grumpy things her children say.