Nancy Sotham
Squamish Elementary School
In November, our school decided to host a CanWest CanSpell spelling bee.
A number of students were given a 4, 000 word study guide before the Christmas holidays. Throughout the month of January, I'd check in with students.
"How's the studying going?" "Pretty good", "Not bad", "OK" were the usual answers. As the date of our spelling bee approached, the students were getting more and more nervous. I'd have students coming to my classroom at lunchtime begging me to let them quit. I'd try to assuage their fears by telling them that I, too, was nervous as I had never attempted to conduct a spelling bee before.
"But you're not up there in front of the whole school making a fool of yourself!" they'd counter. I let the students know they wouldn't be making fools of themselves either.
On Jan. 25, 28 brave souls sat in front of our school's entire student body nervously awaiting their first word. One by one I gave them words to spell from the official CanSpell Word List.
Our judge, Mrs. Radford-Park, either said, "That is correct" and the student returned to his/her seat for the next round or a bell would ring and she said, "That is incorrect" whereupon the student would join the audience. (But not before they were awarded a participation certificate and a small box of chocolates.)
I must admit I had a few concerns regarding the audience.
What if someone blurted out the correct spelling? What if someone laughed when a student misspelled a word? I am happy to report that my fears were unfounded. What did happen was the exact opposite. There was a collective sigh of relief from the audience when a student correctly spelled a word. And we'd hear a large groan ripple through the crowd when a student missed a word and was disqualified. I was so impressed with the support our spellers were given by their peers.
An hour passed and we were down to two finalists. Joy Prine and Shelise Woods went back and forth numerous times spelling and misspelling words while the rest of us sat on the edges of our seats. To win this competition, the speller had to spell her own word and that of her opponent correctly. After several rounds, Shelise Woods was declared the winner and the gymnasium erupted into a loud cheer. We had a winner!
Shelise will now compete against the top spellers from Mamquam and Valleycliffe Elementary schools sometime this month. The winner from the district spelling bee will go to the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in March to compete against the best spellers from B.C.
Squamish Elementary School wishes Shelise luck as she embarks on her spelling bee journey.
