Four students from Central Coast schools will line up against the state’s best spellers after winning their regional finals to secure spots in the State final of the NSW Premier’s Spelling Bee.
They have each won one of 60 regional finals involving 820 schools, which took place online over the past fortnight.
Jake Swan from Pretty Beach Public School (Senior), Dasha Soto from Niagara Park Public School (Junior), Sam Conroy-Liddle from Copacabana Public School (Junior) and Kobe Purchase from Kariong Public School (Senior) will now compete in the state finals to be held on November 4 at Ultimo.
NSW Premier, Dominic Perrottet, said it was exciting to see students across the state testing their spelling prowess.
“I congratulate all the students who have participated in the regionals finals – you have already won by making it this far and demonstrating your fabulous spelling skills,” Perrottet said.
Minister for Education and Early Learning, Sarah Mitchell, said she was delighted events like the Spelling Bee were once again on the school calendar and excited to witness the state final in November.
“It is a tribute to schools and the Arts Unit that they have found new ways to deliver this wonderful event while keeping students safe,” she said.
The Arts Unit Premier’s Spelling Bee Support Officer, Desiree Lane, said the move to online regionals finals had been well received.
“We have had feedback from some of our more remote schools on how wonderful the new format is because it allows them to participate where previously long distances had made travelling to regional finals difficult,” Lane said.
Nearly 1600 students competed in the online regional finals from a starting pool of 165,000 participating students with the most remote student from Bourke-Walgett School of Distance Education, about four hours’ drive from Bourke.
The online format has seen more small schools make it through to the state finals with one senior competition going through to the 27th round before a winner was declared.
Now in its 19th year, the Premier’s Spelling Bee was introduced in 2004 as a fun way for primary school students to engage in spelling.
The program includes activities to encourage all students to improve their vocabulary and spelling and to promote literacy skills in combination with the English K-6 Syllabus.
Junior division includes words such as embargo; cavalcade; notary; and scrupulous, while the senior division participants will wrangle words like besotted; expostulate; hereditary; and subservient.
NSW students consistently achieve top results in spelling in NAPLAN (the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy).
Annually NSW ranks first in Australia in spelling across all year groups (Years 3, 5, 7 and 9).
To compete at the State final a student must have won their school spelling Bee, their zone and regional final.
Source:
Media release, Sep 16
NSW Government