Pupils strive to ensure their spellings “bee” correct. 

On Wednesday, King’s Worcester held its very first “Spelling Bee” competition for Year Five pupils in local Primary Schools, and the event was a roaring success. 

Five local Primary Schools, Wilden All Saints Primary from Stourport, Bewdley Primary, Swan Lane First School from Evesham, Broadheath Primary and Nunnery Wood Primary all took part; Wilden were so keen to participate that they entered two teams! The contest was held in the School’s John Moore Theatre and was compered in inimitable fashion by former Head of English in the Senior School, now Director of Foundation Communications, Mr Maund. 

The schools had been sent 99 spellings in advance to learn, which were in three categories: Easy, Moderate and Difficult, and teams of three pupils competed against each other before lunch, with each competitor pronouncing, spelling and repeating up to three nominated words from each category. The words chosen ranged from easy ones like “broccoli” and “dynamic” to difficult ones like “acknowledgment” and “pseudonym”. With 18 points, Wilden All Saints came first, but a close-fought tie-break was required to separate Swan Lane Primary School and Bewdley Primary School, who had both scored 16 points in the rounds. Unseen, difficult words like “chrysalis”, “ecclesiastical” and “misshapen” decided the eventual outcome, with second place for Swan Lane, and Bewdley third. 

The teams had enjoyed a quick cookie-break between rounds, so took on the team challenge before lunch with great enthusiasm, inventing ways of remembering the difference in spelling between homophones like “hear” and “here”, “meat” and “meet” or “sea and sea”. After an enjoyable lunch in the school dining hall, it was time for the “Super-Speller” competition, with one team member chosen to tackle a series of words. Once again, with four teams sharing a score of nine marks, those unseen words came into play. The final results saw one Wilden All Saints team in third, Nunnery Wood Primary in second and the other Wilden All Saints as the winners. The winning teams received Bronze, Silver or Gold Spelling Bee medals and everyone went away with a Certificate of Participation and a Spelling Bee ribbon. We hope they will return next year to compete again, and we know that no one will ever forget when to use the different spellings of “their” and “there”!