I’m lucky enough to be the overall in-charge of Spelling Bee for two consecutive years. This allowed me to try different things and think about what worked and what didn’t work. I will like to consolidate my observations and put forth my recommendations for next year’s Spelling Bee.

Pre-Spelling Bee

1. Ask all English teachers to surface words that their students have difficulty spelling. This is to alleviate the burden of the Spelling Bee team so that it is not solely responsible for coming up with the words used for Spelling Bee. I have a word to suggest for lower secondary: innovate
2. This year, we came up with a theme: emotions. I think it’s a good way to anchor the Spelling Bee. Moving forward, I suggest that next year’s theme be centered on love languages (gifts, words of affirmation, physical touch, acts of service, quality time). For one, we could draw a link between words that refer to happiness and love languages. We can even use words like blissful, fulfilment and contentment. For another, Year 2 students learn about love languages in their Habits of Mind module.
3. Release a list of spelling rules so that motivated students can prepare for the Spelling Bee thoroughly. Set up a Google classroom and upload the list there. Also include English teachers who will then add their students to this classroom.

During Spelling Bee

1. Having students suggest a word for the Self-initiated Round made me realise that our students are better spellers than I give them credit for. Organising the competition by level is an artificial construct. There could be a Year 1 class who can hold their own against an upper secondary class. This year’s Year 1 champions came to the Semi-final Round, prepared with words like notorious and rendezvous.
2. The Elimination Round in which the students called upon their rivals to spell a word they deemed difficult put everyone on their toes and made them spell these unfamiliar words, one syllable at a time. However,  we lost the audience as they took out their phones rather than follow the proceedings of this round. If we accept the assumption that lower secondary students might be able to spell upper secondary words, I suggest that we 1) organise the Spelling Bee by level again; and 2) have the student audience also spell the words given to the participating level but on a piece of paper. Their attempt will be graded and added to yield a final score. This means that every participating pair will spell all the words given to Y1 - Y4 in one way or another. Doing this, however, will make the Spelling Bee less fun but more engrossing.
3. In a similar vein, the audience lost interest when the Year 3-4s were competing during the Finals. Luckily, their restlessness was swept away by the Teacher’s Round. I think we can experiment with keeping the Finals to just half an hour (one period). If so, the feature that will make next year’s Finals more exciting is to have the top 8 teams transcend level boundaries and compete against one another. Trophies will then be given to the top 3 teams in the school.
4. Of course, we can go the other way and have the Teacher’s Round again next year (one hour finale). Make it a routine that the English Department does for the Finals every year.