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 St. Joseph’s Kennedy 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 Kennedy who participated this year were fifth-grader Lilli Midy, sixth-grader Morgan Bissett and eighth-graders Jared Hennigs and Paige Cox. Cox would have gone on to participate in the regional spelling bee, sponsored by Resource Training and Solutions on Feb. 8, but she got sick the day of the competition and missed her last chance at competition at that level.
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. Hennigs said he had competed previously, but he hadn’t moved on to the next level. The secret for him was his love of reading. It exposes him to many new and unusual words.
Cox said she reads quite a bit but, more importantly, she just likes words. Both Midy and Bissett relied on reading for their exposure to words.
When asked if they practiced spelling at school, they all agreed spelling did not have a place in the curriculum.
“When we were little, we use to take tests,” Hennigs said.
“When we have to work on writing, they tell us spelling doesn’t matter,” Midy said.
“When I was writing with my iPad one time, my teacher said don’t worry about the spelling,” Bissett said. “Just try the best you can.”
While schools still have participants in the spelling bee, preparation for the event is largely an individual thing.
“I had my mom help me study,” Hennigs said.
“They gave us a list of words to look through,” Cox said, “but that’s about it.”
Bissett said standing in front of everybody created a little nervous tension, but the secret to quelling the nerves was simply to remember to “breathe.”
Midy said her secret was just to get started spelling the word. She said it helps to be able to write the word down and look at it to see if it looks right. The others all agreed.
A few of them volunteered the word they missed, with aplomb being the bugaboo for Hennigs; Bissett said she stumbled on precursor.
Sometimes, it’s possible to sound a word out, but other times students said they get a kind of mental image of what the word looks like and how it’s spelled. All students other than the eighth-graders agreed they would try again and encourage their classmates to get involved.
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.
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.
Kennedy School in St. Joseph recently held its local spelling bee. There were four student winners at various grade levels. Left to right are eighth-graders Paige Cox and Jared Hennigs, sixth-grader Morgan Bissett and fifth-grader Lilli Midy. (Cox was supposed to have competed at the Regional Spelling Bee on Feb. 8, but was unable to attend due to sickness.)
