National Spelling Bee Never Fails To Entertain
Posted: Wednesday, May 27, 2009
by Laura Trahan
The 2009 Scripps National Spelling Bee is already underway. This year 293 spellers will battle it out to be named the supreme speller.
Our family loves this time of the year. After all, we have a spelling bee champion in our house. Granted it was fourth, sixth and seventh grade at the local level. We have all heard the story endless times. We all know how he lost in fifth grade on the word "persistent" to Wade Coriel (yes, I misspelled the last name).
Seriously, we love this time of the year because we get to see children at their best. It also is awesome listening to ESPN announcers give play by play just as they would any other event.
This years players to watch is contestant Speller 139 who placed second in the 2008 Spelling Bee. Sidhard Chand, Speller 139, is a 13 year old from Michigan. Another player to watch is a three-time top ten finalist, Kavya Shivashankar, a 13 year old from Kansas.
The Great news is that together my husband and I garnered enough points to make it to the quarterfinals. At least we did online with the quiz from the website. We only missed eight of the 25 words. Not bad, I say. Think you can do better? Check out http://www.spellingbee.com/ and click on Take the test. I want to see your results in the comment section below. You are after all writers. Lets see how well SearchWarp writers can do on the spelling quiz.
The spelling bee is a great reminder as to how diverse our country really is along with showing off the amazing intelligence of these kids. Just look at this statistic from the site: "English is not the first language of 33 spellers, and 117 spellers speak languages other than English." Amazing. If that doesn't show how diverse our kids of our nation are becoming, I don't know what does.
I encourage you to tune in at least for the finals on ABC Thursday night to see the future of our country. Make it a family event, pop some popcorn, play some fun word games, make it a family contest to spell the words before the contestants, get to know these young kids through the profiles and cheer for the ones you want to win. For added fun, throw in some alphabet soup or pasta for dinner. This can be a fun family tradition to start. Go Speller 255 from our hometown of Houston! Aditya Chemudupaty Rules!!
This Article has been viewed 246 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (4 total)Laura, I did not do better. I was amazed at the mistakes I made and at the ones I spelled correctly. Through round three, I had only 19 points. Kudos to you and Rob. Danny will, no doubt, do better than me. Very interesting and fun article, my friend!YAY LORRIE! If rob wouldn't of been by me, I would still be spelling! LOL!
Hi Laura.Laodicean is the new word I learned, meaning lukewarm or indifferent in religion or politics. Very enjoyable article, a good read.Thank you for joining my fan club, I am honored.May your day be filled with sunshine and laughter.God bless and best regards,Nenita
Hi Laura.Laodicean is the new word I learned, meaning lukewarm or indifferent in religion or politics. Very enjoyable article, a good read.Thank you for joining my fan club, I am honored.May your day be filled with sunshine and laughter.God bless and best regards,Nenita
hi laura
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.