8th Grade International Spelling Bee

On Wednesday November 16^th students of 8 ‘B’ and the 8^th Grade ‘Wolves’ competed in an international Spelling Bee against our partner school, Presdales, in Hertfordshire, England. The name ‘Spelling Bee’ was first used in 1808 to mean an orthography competition, or, in other words, a competition to see who can spell the best. Typically, students spell out loud in turn, and if they make a mistake, they are ‘out’, until there is a grand winner.

In preparation for the Bee, the 8^th grade English group ‘Wolves’ made a list of Russian words for the Presdales girls to spell, and divided them into ‘easy’, ‘more difficult’ and ‘very difficult’. The Presdales girls did the same for us, but their list was of English words.

The two schools met on Wednesday evening via zoom. For the Presdales Year 11 students, it was still only 9am! The event started with a short performance on the khomus by Evgeniya Moskvitina. Then Milena Ammosova and Anastasia Ponomarova dictated the first round of Russian words to the English girls, who spelled them out on paper. After that, the Presdales girls dictated 10 English words to us.

The winners of the first round were Anastasia Ponomarova, Artur Soloviev and Nyurguyana Tretyakova, who went through to round two, where they had to spell words out loud. The overall winners were Anastasia from IAS and Esmae from Presdales – congratulations to both girls!!

After the Bee, there was some time for the students to chat in English. Our foreign friends were blown away to hear that the temperature was -40 degrees Celcius! Presdales School complimented our 8^th graders on their English, and three of them have asked to become pen-pals with our students.

Although spelling out loud is a difficult and stressful task, students really appreciated the chance to have actual, face-to-face contact with one another, and we hope the next joint event will be soon!