Spelling Bee
The Spelling Bee competition is thought to have originated in the United States and Spelling Bee events are now incredibly popular and are held in countries all around the world.
Today, Cliddesden Primary School hosted their very first Spelling Bee.
Heats
The competition started off with individual class heats with each year group being able to send one child through to the grand final assembly.
The children stood in a circle and were given a word relative to the year group they are in. The children had to repeat the word, spell it and then say the word again. If they spelt the word correctly they remained standing, if incorrect, they had to sit down. It was close in all classes!
Our whole school Spelling Bee winners:
1st Place - Alize, Year 1
2nd Place - Eryn, Year 4
3rd Place - Olivia, Year 6
In Willow Class, three Year R children were left to battle it out, Ayriana, Ashritha and Max. In Year 1, Alize and Grace competed for a place in the final.
In Beech Class, Basil and Ailani-Mai had to endure 4 knockout rounds before Basil finally took his place in the final. Year 2’s had some really tricky words and it was a close call between Harry D and Isla to take this spot in the final.
Once again, there was a battle in Chestnut Class. The final three children from Year 3 being Elspeth, Fletcher and Finlay. Elspeth being on fine form won herself a place in the final and the battle between Eryn, James and Fred in Year 4 was won by Eryn spelling ‘occasionally’ correctly.
Oak Class really did have some tough and tricky words on their word list! Carys from Year 5 and Olivia from Year 6 both fought gallantly and took the final two spaces in the competition.
The Class 'Heats'
The Final
The final was held in assembly and consisted of the 8 children who had won their heats: Ashritha, Alize, Basil, Harry D, Elspeth, Eryn, Carys and Olivia.
To ensure a fair competition, the children continued to be given words from their relevant year group word lists. They had one chance and one chance only to spell the word correctly, closely watched over by our chief referee and organiser, Mrs Nicholson.
All the children successfully completed round one correctly spelling (in ascending year group order): as, and, back, every, accident, address, variety and vegetable but sadly we lost Basil and Carys in round 2 with the remaining six children managing to succeed in round 3.
The spellings got progressive more difficult and unfortunately in round 4 we lost Ashritha with a tricky spelling for a 4 year old – ‘they’ and in round 5, Elspeth went out with – ‘disappear’.
The Finals Assembly
Our Finalists
Some really tricky words were now being directed at the children and in round 6 we lost Harry with ‘February’ and Olivia with ‘necessary’.
We had now reached round 7 with only Alize and Eryn remaining. Alize’s word was the homophone ‘their’. Mrs Roberts explained she wanted the belonging to ‘their’. Very carefully Alize spelt the word ‘there’. The excitement was mounting. If Eryn spelt her word correctly she would be the winner. Her word was ‘possession’ which she spelt with one ‘s’ followed by two. This led to a tiebreaker, it was extremely tense.
Alize’s word was ‘could’ which she spelt correctly. This meant that Eryn had to spell her word correctly to remain in the competiton. She was given the word ‘separate’. The audience were waiting in anticipation, KS2 were willing her on. Would she put ‘ar’ or ‘er’? Eryn began to spell the word – s e p. She then hesitated – e r a t e. Unfortunately, despite considering her options, Alize had pipped Eryn at the post.
Well done to all the children for taking part and for being such a good audience during the final and huge congratulations to our 8 finalists who should all be incredibly proud of themselves for making the final and being brave enough to stand up in front of an audience of over 100 people to compete for the title.
Click here to return to our One World Literacy Week page.
Our KS1 Finalists
1st Place: Alize
Our KS2 Finalists
1st Place: Eryn
