National Spelling Bee Competition 2024 by Miss Lauren
In January, we were lucky enough to be invited to put a team together for the National Spelling Bee. To help create our team we held a school spelling bee competition. The competition was open to all students in Year 6 and upwards. The list of words were shared with the competitors and over 30 students took part. The Year 6 students were so keen that we had to do two rounds to whittle the numbers down to get our top three and our overall champion. The students were very competitive and we were very impressed with their level of commitment. With lots of tough competition, eventually we managed to get three final Year 6 students and three final Secondary Students. Our final six who made it to the Spelling Bee team were Aaryan (Year 6), Nyle (Year 6), Amna (Year 8) and Rifa (Year 8). Zaeem (Year 6) and Tiya (Year 9) were the winners from Primary and Secondary.
“The students worked really hard to prepare for this event, giving up their break times to join the heats in school and to participate in practice runs with their competing peers. A huge well done to all of the students we took along to the final. They had some strong competition and some challenging words to spell but they all did really well. They all showed great determination standing up on stage in front of an audience! They all made Nadeen proud!“
– by Miss Emma
After some practice, myself and Miss Emma took the Nadeen Spelling Bee team to the National Competition on Monday the 19th of February. We were in the second regional semi final. On the day we competed against over 50 students from a wide range of schools from across the Island. Our team had worked extremely hard practising and learning the words set by the competition. The students had to hold their nerve and stand alone on the stage and spell one of the words given by the judges.
“It was fun and a good competition.“
– by Amna (Year 8)
The students were given difficult words and all but one made it through the first round. The competition was extremely tough and all our students were given extremely challenging words in the following rounds. Unfortunately none of our students made it to the final. However, our Nadeen students were a fantastic supportive team, who remained calm and happy throughout the whole process. One student even moved forward to shake the judges hand when he was knocked out. The only student in the whole competition to do this, and it was well received by the judges. These students made Nadeen very proud and I look forward to the National Spelling Bee in 2025.