Regional Spelling Bee Rescheduled to January

Students from several upstate New York schools who are lucky enough to win their spelling bees will compete at the regional level more quickly than they had expected.

The Daily Star Regional Spelling Bee will occur ON SATURDAY, JANUARY 14, 2023. The competition was originally scheduled for March of 2023, but it has been rescheduled to give the regional spelling bee winner more time to rehearse and prepare for the annual Scripps Spelling Bee, which is scheduled to be held in May.

The regional Spelling Bee will be held at the Goodrich Theater on the SUNY Oneonta campus. Daily Star Editor Robert Cairns will be the master of ceremonies. Spelling Bee coordinator Martha Ryan is grateful to SUNY, who has kindly agreed to provide their theater to the spelling bee for the event at no charge.

Fourteen schools in the Delaware-Chenango-Madison-Otsego and the Otsego Northern Catskills area have already signed up to hold individual spelling events at their schools. These schools had until November 30 to complete their spelling bees and crown their spelling bee winners. Those winners can now take advantage of their upcoming winter holidays to prepare themselves to compete in the regional contest.

The Spelling Bee uses a list of 4,000 words taken from the “Words of the Champions” list. Any of those words could be used at either the local, regional, or national Spelling Bees. Each student who signs up to participate in a local spelling bee is given a list of 100 words to use as practice. Each student who wins their local school’s crown gets a list of 500 words to practice.

Coordinator Ryan loves the concept of the Spelling Bee. She is glad to see students learning new words and engaging in vocabulary and spelling. In addition to increasing their spelling skills, Ryan believes it helps them to develop study skills and public speaking experience. When a student is asked a word, they must repeat it aloud before spelling it.

Ryan stated that there is an increased number of students who have signed up to participate compared to those who participated in last year’s spelling bee. She further said she was glad to see an increase in contestants. She believes this will improve the diversity and quality of the competition. She also hopes the increased number of entries will increase community attendance at the regional contest.

The winner of the March 2022 regional competition was seventh-grader Daanya Butt from Oneonta, while eighth-grader Emily Menzies was the runner-up.

The regional winner will compete at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in National Harbor, Maryland. It will take place on Memorial Day weekend.

The Daily Star is proud to be a supporter of this educational event.

As the event sponsor, they pay the registration fee for all the schools in the Delaware-Chenango-Madison-Otsego and the Otsego Northern Catskills Board of Cooperative Educational Service. They also pay the fee for the winner to compete in the Scripps Spelling Bee.

The snow date for the competition is Saturday, January 21.

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Competitors in Spelling Bees Hone their Skills


Spelling bee competitions may be different for everyone. Like Meade Pandya, he finds it more amusing and enjoyable rather than seeing it as a contest or something to be anxious about.

Pandya is in his seventh grade at Heights Middle School in Farmington and takes spelling bees as an easy challenge that he does not need to prepare rigorously for. The twelve-year-old Pandya finished third in the most recent spelling bee competition at his school. In a confident statement, he admitted that he had only spent around two hours studying for the event. Since one of his hobbies and past-time activity is fishing, he finds it a little embarrassing to have misspelled the word “tilapia” in one of the contests he joined, Pandya reported.

He will then be joining another competition which will be participated by students from the first until the eighth grades. The Washington D.C. region will host the 98th Scripps National Spelling Bee from May 28 to June 2. The winners advance to district bees and finally to the state bees as the competition begins at the school level. Winners at the state level are given entry into the national competition.

The participating schools in 2022-2023 come from 25 counties out of the 33 counties of the state which includes newly-registered 224 New Mexico schools. And most of these participants have qualified from school-level competitions. The district bees must be done by Jan. 31 to qualify for next year’s finals. If there will be no health issues, the state bee of New Mexico will be held on April 1 in Albuquerque. In such a scenario, a state bee will be conducted online on March 30. The sponsors of the state spelling bee include Musenda Credit union and the Albuquerque Journal.

According to Sara Allen, the spelling bee coordinator for the Reserve (New Mexico) Independent Schools that in the digital and technologically-inclined era where spell checks, autocorrect, and shorthand texts such as LOL, BRB, etc. have come to emerge, spelling has only become a matter of forgotten skill or penmanship. She has observed that spelling has fallen behind its true importance due to technology.

Allen emphasized that schools should enhance spelling knowledge and skills because it is important for students to learn. Alongside spelling, vocabulary and comprehension of spelling patterns should also be one of the highlights in the scope of basic education. And spelling bees greatly help students to improve their spelling skills in multiple functionalities.

She also believes that students generally receive more benefits through establishing more confidence after taking risks in challenging tasks.

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