On the Spelling Bee

I hope you enjoyed watching Akeelah and the Bee recently in class. Although the movie was made in 2006, it still accurately shows how competitive the Scripps National Spelling Bee is, and how different the spellers can be from each other sometimes.

The Scripps Bee has been going on in Washington, D.C. since 1925. The movie accurately portrayed the pressure and that many spellers have coaches, but only touched on the fact that the best spellers READ a lot. If you look at the link to right called "Local Spelling Bee Finalists give advice," you will hear some of them tell you how important reading is to learning new words and spelling correctly. Another thing they say is to think of the words "in syllables," which is something we have been doing all year.


The school has said they will put our official school rules on our school web site by Friday, 5/18. But they have given us some guidelines already, and I will put them below:

-          Spelling Bee

-          First Round in Class

-          Should start from next Monday till the last day of May.

-          The final round student list should be ready by the end of May 31.

-          Grade 1 and all the junior highs are not in the final round

-          G2-4:G4-6&6C

-          6/7: Grade 2-4 (period 7-8)

-          6/8: Grade 5-6 (period 7-8)

-          Location: Gym (parents will be invited)

-          Final Round Rules

-          The word will be repeated twice by the judge.

-          Contestants need to say the word then spell, and then say the word again. For example, Book b-o-o-k book.

-          The first letter must be spoken out within 10 seconds. If contestants cannot open their mouth until the 11th second, then they are out.

-          Contestants need to spell correctly within 20 seconds.

-          The word must be spelled at once.

-          Students have only one chance.

-          It’s okay for students to ask the judge to repeat the word and ask for a definition.

-          The first 3 rounds, spellers will be given on grade words. The following 4 rounds will give out words that are mixed within the same group.

-          Until the 11th round, judges will give out words that belong to the next 2 grades.

-          In the very end, we will start to use the challenge list.

                                - If the student is absent in the final round, it means that student has giving up.

A couple of more points:
Grades 5 & 6 Teachers will manage the younger students (Grades 1 to 4) and Teachers from grades 1 to 4 will manage the spellers in Grades 5 & 6.

There will be a practice session for grades 5 and 6 during period 1 on June 6 in the gym.


I wish all of our spellers good luck, and have fun with the contest!

We want to say congratulations to the winners of the in-class contest we did last week:

Anna, Shaunna, Lucas, Tim, Amy

They will represent our class in the grades 5 and 6 spelling bee on June 8th. You guys need to know grade 5 and 6 words well, and if you want to win I suggest studying the grades 7 and 8 lists. If you are reading regularly, that helps. Read more English materials or novels and be a machine about looking up new words!

Dear Students,

Welcome back to school! After Lunar New Year Break it is hard to get back into good study habits again, but that is the best thing for you. I recommend you use your best exercise and sleep habits to help you with your studies. Going to sleep early and getting 8 hours of sleep each night is quite helpful, as is getting at least a half hour of activity each day which makes you sweat. Another good habit is to study for a half hour as soon as get home after school, certainly before playing any games. Depending on what time you get home, it may be reasonable to eat first or say hello to your family!

What I want to remind you about now is that there are some students who still have not handed in their winter break homework. You either had to write about something interesting you saw or did during this past Lunar New Year vacation or else you would have to finish the movie review you already got. If you still have not finished, please finish it by this week. You can download the needed files on the right side of the blog.

I would also like to mention that the school needs people to write good articles for the Yoder Magazine, so if you have something interesting to write about, for example a hobby or interesting experience you want to share, please talk to me or teacher Jacob.

Oh, another thing that has changed this semester is I have decided to try to simplify things with tests. Before I was asking students to show me their parents have signed the test, but now I am not asking for that. I am also not using Zip Grade for shorter tests, only for longer exams. If there is a problem with your test score, meaning you got under a 60%, then I will contact your parents by email or by using your communication book.

I hope your semester goes well and that our class keeps developing its study skills and English!