This competition is tied into the English Department's Spelling and Grammar programme which began in September with the classes being tested each week on challenging words. Throughout this learning process the students built up a wide and varied vocabulary and in the end four students were chosen to represent each class. They were given a comprehensive folio of words ranging from easy to difficult to study for the big day.
The Big Day
Nerves were jangling as the five teams comprising of sixteen students took to the stage in front of the whole of Year 7. Mrs Powter stood ready to annunciate the words in her perfect English to the students, whilst Miss Treeby took control of the scoring. Mr Wallace with microphone in hand opened the contest and introduced all the teams to rousing cheers from their classmates.
The Spelling Bee consists of two distinct sections: the first is the individual round and the second is a team round.
Life doesn’t get any more exciting than this.
Round 1. The students all progressed through round one (it was a free round) but in Round 2 we lost a few and they had to drag their feet off the stage and sit with the rest of their classmates to watch the competition progress. In round 3 the words were more challenging and again we lost some others. After another few rounds everyone was knocked out….well not everyone as one brave spelling bee contestant stood in the lonely spotlight of the stage, anxiously waiting to spell the next word correctly to become the individual Spelling Champ.
The student Aiesyah Anuar from Mr Ekkel’s class heard the word and as she deliberately pronounced each letter as if her life depended on it, Miss Powter, turned to Mr Wallace and gave the nod. It was correct. Aiesyah was the champion.
So the next section was the team round. The team have to choose one level of word difficulty: easy for one point a word, medium for two points a word and difficult for three points a word.
Most teams choose medium although one brave team chose difficult. Mr Islam held the timer and said ‘GO’. The students rattled through the words some said ‘pass’ when they didn’t know it, but the success rate was high. In the end Miss Treeby tallied the scores and it was Miss Treeby’s class who won the group round to the delight of her class and of course herself!
Mr Wallace invited all the contestants to the stage and they were all given a book prize. This was a wonderful event showcasing all of our students’ skills in spelling and hopefully next year we can do it all again.