Students Spell Their Way To The Top

By STEPHANIE BUNKER

Moapa Valley Progress

Grant M Bowler Elementary School has some sharp spellers that proved themselves at the school’s annual fourth and fifth grade Spelling B on Wednesday May 24.
The host of this friendly annual competition was Greg Winzenried.

Fifth grade teacher, Amy Widdison has been an organizer of the event for five years now. But no one seemed to know how long the competition had been going before that.
“The Spelling B gives the kids an opportunity to be in a competition and perform,” Widdison said. “It gives those kids who don’t always do sports a place to shine as well.”

Widdison explained that the whole 5th grade was given a list of 600 words to study and prepare. All of the words used during the Spelling B would come from that list.

Before the actual competition began, each 5th grade class held its own elimination round to pick out the seven top spellers in each class. This made up 28 students to begin in the first round of the Spelling B. The big event was held in front of the entire 4th and 5th grade classes at the school.

The instruction to the students was to say their name, say the word to be spelled, spell it, and then repeat the word back. If the speller got the word incorrect they went to sit with the audience. If they correctly spelled the word then they continue on.

As the first round came to a close only about half of the kids were still in the game.
The 3rd round was made up of 11 kids and by the 4th round there were only 5 competitors left.
It took one more round of spelling to determine the top 3 winners.
During this final round Ryan Stultz was the only one to spell the word correctly, making him first place winner.

The finalists went on to a 6th round to determine 2nd and 3rd place. Andy Wood was given the word ‘preservatives’, which she misspelled. Isaac Thompson had to spell the same word correctly in order to take second place. The pressure was on, but he spelled it flawlessly. This gave Andy 3rd place.
“I thought the kids did really well,” Widdison said. “The words seemed to get harder earlier on so the kids had to up their game and spell.”