Midday’s Gary Eichten gets the spelling bee lowdown from Mary Theurer of Staples, Minnesota. Thuerer details the preparations and experience of students participating in state’s spelling bee.
Midday’s Gary Eichten gets the spelling bee lowdown from Mary Theurer of Staples, Minnesota. Thuerer details the preparations and experience of students participating in state’s spelling bee.
SPEAKER 1: How many participants. this year?
SPEAKER 2: We have 30 participants. this year. We have two fifth graders, six sixth graders, eight seventh graders, and fourteen eighth graders.
SPEAKER 1: Kids all psyched up. I suppose. You start at 1:00, don't you?
SPEAKER 2: We start at 1:00.
SPEAKER 1: How are the participants selected?
SPEAKER 2: The participants are selected first in a classroom bee, then moving on to a district spelling bee, and finally a regional spelling bee. There are nine of those in the state corresponding to the [INAUDIBLE] regions, and those were held in the month of March. And then the 30 students are selected. Either the first place of each subregional bee or the first and runner-up represent their region.
SPEAKER 1: Now the state spelling bee, do you have preliminary rounds and then a final round? Or what's the mechanics?
SPEAKER 2: The mechanics are the very first round is a practice round where every student is given the word that they will spell and they have that in their hand so that no one is eliminated during the first round. They introduce themselves, and then they also get a chance to hear the pronouncer give them their word. And they can look at the card and spell it right off the card.
After that, we go right into the spelling bee, and it continues in the same format. However, the students order is changed during each round through a card shuffling maneuver so that the first student isn't always first and the last student isn't always last.
SPEAKER 1: Do you get two chances, or just one misspelled word and you're out?
SPEAKER 2: One misspelled word, and you're out.
SPEAKER 1: Yikes!
SPEAKER 2: And they cannot change the order of the letters. You can stop in midstream while you're spelling a word, but you must go back to the beginning and spell it with the same letters, even though you've realized that you may have said a C and should have said an S. And then the student is no longer in the bee.
SPEAKER 1: The winner goes on to the Nationals, then?
SPEAKER 2: Yes, the end of May. The winner-- and it's usually one or both parents go along with them-- to Washington DC.
SPEAKER 1: How have Minnesota children done at the Nationals? Have we ever won it?
SPEAKER 2: No, we've never won it. Last year's speller, I think, was in right in the 10th or 11th round. So which is really a good placing. There's probably 250 students spelling in the National Bee.
SPEAKER 1: Is it a lot of fun, the whole process of the state bee and so on?
SPEAKER 2: It's lots of fun. It's really nerve-wracking for the students. And we try to make it as comfortable for them because they're still pretty young kids to be handling the pressure. And I know last year's winning student, during the two weeks before the state spelling be, and his parents had gone over 30,000 words in preparation for the bee, and he'd missed 10 or 12 of them.
SPEAKER 1: [CHUCKLES] Well, have fun today.
SPEAKER 2: Thank you.
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