How Do You Spell That?

A team effort

Grade 7-8 students from Ste. Anne’s and St. Joseph schools battled over words last night in the Weaver Auditorium during the Semi-finals of Spring Spell ’06.

The spelling bee was introduced as part of the 41st Annual Kiwanis Festival and the committee says it took a couple of months to put it together.

“The Organising was not as long as writing all the sentences,” states Jane Jackson of the North Bay Literacy Council.

The North Bay Literacy Council and the North Bay Symphony partnered to bring the art spelling back into vogue.

The interesting twist to Spring Spell ’06 is the fact that the bee is a team effort, removing some intimidation individuals might feel when competing alone.

There are 1400 predetermined competition words, that were decided upon by Yvonne Henderson and her volunteers, and each team draws a word to spell from the bucket and has a time limit in which to spell the word.

“Yvonne got them (the words) from a website, not a Spelling Bee site, but a Spelling Bee prep website,” states Jackson.

The students fiercely competitive and last night's draw pitted a French school against an English one, and in the end the St. Joseph’s English school triumphed to move into the finals, Wednesday May 24th at St.Joseph-Scollard Hall Secondary School.

Ste. Anne team spokesperson, Alyssa Ledrtone, said her team was glad they came out and that the competition was a good one.

“Well it’s hard to remember the difference between the French word and the English word, but after studying really hard it gets easier.”

“I enjoyed more doing than watching it, but watching our school and the other school is still interesting,” Ledrtone said.

Jillian Gear, Amanda Barrios and Sarah Rocheleau coming off their win say they welcome competition, but that they can’t have to much confidence going into an event.

“Because we like English class so much, we just enjoy spelling,” says Barrios and Gear adds in “We want to make our school proud.”

Semi-finals for the High school part of the competition take place tonight at 7 p.m. in the Weaver Auditorium at the main campus of Canadore College.

The event is free and open to the public.