by Dave DeMars
news@thenewsleaders.com
You can tell what time of year it is without even looking at the calendar. Just ask what’s happening at the local schools. Winter Snow Festival? Valentine’s Day Dance? Spelling Bee?
Yes indeed. If it’s February, it’s spelling-bee time. And this year Sartell–St. Stephen Middle School sponsored a team. While the emphasis on spelling is not what it used to be, and spell check helps many of us through much of the tedium of proofing our writing, a good speller can save time just by knowing how to spell a word without using the spell-check crutch.
Students from Sartell who were slated to participate in the regional spelling bee were fifth-grader Nivanthi Wijetunga, seventh-grader Anthony Berndt and eighth-grader Jayke Peters.
The Newsleader had a chance to talk with the students about what it was like to participate and how they prepared for the event.
Many of the older participants had competed in previous spelling bees. A few had success and moved from the initial in-school bee to the regional bee.
Berndt and Peters competed at Sartell Middle School first and took top honors. They then competed at the regional spelling bee Feb. 8. Berndt took fourth, he thought, and Peters took seventh in the morning session this year. The bee had a morning and afternoon session with a total of 54 contestants (27 in each session). Eighth-grader Haley Evenson from Foley correctly spelled tantalize to take the first-place spot in the morning bee, while eighth-grader Nicholas Little from Dassel-Cokato placed first in the afternoon session.
Berndt said he studied the lists regularly and had his mom quiz him. It seemed to help. Peters on the other hand did self quizzes and read the lists often to prepare.
Peters was an old hand at the spelling bee, having competed last year. He took ninth last year and came in confident he would do well this year.
“This year I did a little better,” Peters said.
Nervousness is always a problem, they admitted, but Peters seemed to have an answer.
“It’s a lot of trying to calm yourself down,” he said. “Focusing on the words you have spelled and the other words in the round to try and predict what type of word you are going to get.”
“I just take my time,” Berndt said.
He also likes to write the word down and frequently will ask for the definition of the word and re-pronunciation of the word.
“It kind of helps by giving you a sense of what kinds of sounds are in the word, and then you can piece together the word with different phonics and the sounds of the letters,” Berndt said.
Peters agreed but added that for words he was certain he knew, he used the mental imaging approach to spelling. But if the word sounded completely strange to him, he went back to sounding the word out.
For eighth-graders, this is their final competition; for those in grades 5–7, it’s another year of practice and hanging around words to better prepare for next year’s competition.
Sartell Academic Extensions Coordinator Lori Dornburg explained how the bees work at the local level. In Sartell, each grade has its own spelling bee with five students proceeding to the district bee. From 20 students, she winnows the number down to the top three from that group. Those three proceed to the regional level.
“The kids did amazingly well,” Dornburg said. “They should be very proud. Anytime you go to a contest like this, whether it’s a spelling bee or a geography bee, it’s always the luck of the draw. You might get that super-hard word or you might get an easier word. I always tell the kids to grab a dictionary and have someone quiz you because you never know what the word is going to be.”
Regional winners will advance to the Multi-Region State Spelling Bee Tuesday, Feb. 21 at Lakes Country Service Cooperative in Fergus Falls. That winner will advance to the Scripps National Spelling Bee from May 28-June 3 in Washington, D.C.
Jayke Peters, an eighth-grader from Sartell–St. Stephen Middle School, listens intently as the definition of a word, along with its pronunciation, is repeated for him. Peters says that the pronunciation of a word can sometimes reveal the proper spelling of a word. Peters finished fourth out of 27 in the morning session.
Anthony Berndt, a seventh-grader from Sartell-St. Stephen Middle School, uses his pencil and paper to try out the spelling of a word. Berndt explained that being able to write a word down helps because sometimes just the way a word looks on paper gives a clue as to whether it is correct or not. Berndt finished seventh out of 27 in the morning session.
