Spelling bee news

1)  Congratulations to our 2012-2013 homeschool spelling bee winner, Adam Roy, a sixth grader from Saratoga Springs, who won our homeschool bee in December, and did a fine job of representing homeschoolers at the Times Union regional spelling bee held at Proctor's Theater in March, spelling in a field of 118 students representing ten counties.  Adam was onstage under the spotlights for four hours and spelled "insidious" and "vainglory" successfully in the first two rounds.  Forty five students remained at the beginning of the third round, when the words got considerably harder, and only about 20 students survived that round.  The word that tripped Adam up was "schottische."  This is a word that would flummox most adults as well!

Here is a video clip from the second round of the Times Union bee at Proctor's.  Adam is somewhere in the middle of the seated group waiting his turn.  (Spellers are ordered alphabetically with homeschoolers sitting near the students from Hebrew Academy of the Capital District and Hoosick Falls School District.) Source (with additional coverage and photos):  Times Union.


Congratulations as well and best of luck to eighth grader Ryan Devanandan, a three time contestant from Sand Creek Middle School, who ultimately won the bee with "prevaricate" and will represent our region at the Scripps National Bee in late May.   More coverage of Ryan is here.

2) The Scripps spelling bee officials announced today that this year's national bee will have a vocabulary as well as a spelling component.  I applaud this change as it formally recognizes something that has always been a central value of the bee.  The strongest spellers always develop great vocabularies in the course of preparing for spelling bees, because a knowledge of meanings, word etymologies, and linguistic roots can often be very helpful in attacking unfamiliar words.

Bee officials have also announced plans to offer additional vocabulary materials to local bee organizers for optional use in next year's preliminary local bees.   I intend to review those materials as soon as they are released in August and will post more information about the format of next year's homeschool bee on this blog at that time so that all homeschool spellers have the information they need to prepare for next year's homeschool bee.