Spelling Bee at Queen Anne’s School by Anya & Eloise

On Friday 20th January, Anya, Eloise and Bethany from Year 5 took part in the Queen Anne’s Spelling Bee Competition. The girls recount their day:

Mrs Chalmers walked us to the school. When we arrived, we received a warm welcome from the Queen Anne’s staff. We were then taken to the hall where the Spelling Bee would take place. We sat down at a table called ‘Buzzy’ as that was our team name!

We were really looking forward to lunch to see what delectable foods Queen Anne’s would provide. As such, we were slightly underwhelmed with sandwiches of cheese, egg, tuna, pastrami and ham. There were also some vegetable crisps. A big portion of brownies made up for it!

After lunch we started to become scared and nervous that our parents wouldn’t be there to support us so we drew pictures and told stories to calm our rising nerves. Thankfully, all of our parents arrived and we each got a hug before going up in our teams on the stage.

All the students lined up on the stage to play last man standing. The judges would give you a word to spell and if you got it wrong you would sit down! Ultimately we were not the people standing.

After that, we had a quick break and then we did a speed round. Your team would stand up on stage and each contestant had a word to spell. Your team had two minutes to spell as many words as possible and you could pick easy, medium or hard words.

In summary, we really enjoyed our first ever Year 5 Spelling Bee. We worked well as a team, encouraging and supporting each other, even when we made mistakes. Spelling out loud is different to writing and we recommend to future participants practice spelling out loud and projecting their voices.