The countdown is on for the best spellers in NSW, with 100 regional finalists announced for the annual Premier’s Spelling Bee state final to be held on Friday, November 2.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Local contenders from New England and North West public schools include senior finalists Sam Russell (Armidale City Public School) and Chloe McKinnon (Tamworth Public School).
Junior final contenders include George Wall (Inverell Public School) and Charlie Wellings (Tamworth Public School).
These young orthographers will soon go letter-to-letter against 49 other spellers from across the state in the junior and senior divisions.
To have qualified for the state final, the students have won their school, zone and regional finals and correctly spelled words such as embargo; cavalcade; notary; and scrupulous for the juniors and besotted; expostulate; hereditary; subservient for seniors.
They now sit in the top 2.5 per cent of regional finalists, and top 0.06 per cent of all competition entrants.
Now, in its 15th year, the 2018 Spelling Bee has seen a record participation of 170,000 students from almost 1,000 public schools in NSW, an increase of 20,000 students and 120 schools on the 2017 challenge. To accommodate the growth in entrants, the NSW Department of Education this year hosted a record 50 regional finals, four of which were in rural NSW.
The 2018 state final will be held in the Eugene Goossens Hall, ABC Centre, Ultimo, on Friday, November 2.
The Premier’s Spelling Bee was introduced in 2004 as a fun and educational way for primary school students to engage in spelling. The program includes activities to encourage all students to improve their vocabulary and spelling and to promote literacy skills in combination with the English K-6 Syllabus.
NSW students perform strongly in spelling in NAPLAN (the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy). This year NSW was ranked first in Australia in spelling across all year groups (Years 3, 5, 7 and 9).
