Every year, shortly after our Geography Bee, we also have our school Spelling Bee. The winner of the school Bee has the opportunity to then move on to a regional Spelling Bee. The winner of that then continues to move on until the Scripps National Spelling Bee, which you can actually see on ESPN every year.
The Bee always begins with initial rounds in each grade level. Every round, students are given a word. If it’s spelling incorrectly, they’re out. If they spell it correctly, they move on to the next round. Within the grade level, we continued until we were down to 10. Those 10 then moved on to the finals where they were able to compete in front of the school.
The finals worked much like in the classroom. If you spelled a word correctly, you continue on. If you spell one incorrectly, you’re out. That would continue all the way down until the championship round which would consist of the final two students remaining. Once someone spelled a word incorrectly, the other would have to spell that word correct. Then, they’d get a championship word. If they spelled that word correctly, they’d be the 2012 Spelling Bee winner!
This year, we had a battle unlike ever before with the final two students, Alyxandra and Faith. They lasted an incredible 35 rounds before a winner was crowned! You’ll have to watch the video below to find out who our champion was!
Congratulations to Faith, Alyxandra, and Emma, as well as all the other participants!
Do you have anything like a spelling bee at your school?
What’s your favorite word that we may not have heard of before? What does it mean?
Well done guys, that was some very impressive spelling! We don’t have spelling bees in the UK, and like Mrs Hembree I often have to write a word down first and see if it ‘looks’ right. I love playing Scrabble, which is a word game where spelling is quite important. A word which I rather enjoy is duplicitous, which means treacherous, or deceitful. I enjoy looking at the roots of words – duplo = double as in duplex or duplicate… and you could think of duplicitous as being two-faced.
Mrs M
A Room with a View, UK
What impressive stage, is this in your school? If so it must be a big place. I find spelling quite difficult really, so I am very impressed with anyone that takes part in a spelling bee. A word I’d like to offer that is underused is ‘mercurial’. Meaning to have sharp and delightful qualities. One may have a very pleasing, ‘mercurial’ personality. One may play sport in a way that is so impressive and with such pleasure that we might say the player has ‘mercurisl’ qualities.
Spelling bees are not common in England, every time I see a bee posted I think we should have one.
Why do we call them ‘spelling bees’?
Mr E
Hawes
Dear Faith, Alyxandra, Mr Avery and students,
A big congratulations to the winner (I won’t spoil it for people who haven’t watched the video yet) and a big congratulations to both girls for such an epic battle!
I always enjoyed spelling at school but we don’t have spelling bees at schools in Australia (that I have seen anyway!)
Have you heard of the word serendipity? It means a good coincidence or a happy surprise.
Here is another interesting word for you cacophony. Does anyone know what it means?
Your blogging buddy,
Mrs M☀rris
Dear Mr. Avery,
I am always amazed by students who do well in spelling bees because I am not one of them! I am a very good speller and love interesting words, so you might think I could do well.
However, I can’t spell words out loud! I have to write down the word and then I can spell it. I wonder if you have other students in your class like me.
We do not have spelling bees at our school. If we had one, maybe you would hear the word ” predilection” which means an inclination towards something. Mrs. Hembree has a prediliction towards dressing up crazy at school!
Have a great day!
Mrs. Hembree