[etni] Spelling Bee (continued)
- From: "Ora Baumgarten" <orabaumgarten@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2007 23:07:07 +0300
Hi,
Teachers have been asking me lots of questions about the final round of
the Jerusalem Spelling Bee. Perhaps the organizers want to respond to this?
I'll tell you in the meantime what I can. First of all, it's not ongoing -
it's an annual event. There will probably (hopefully) be one again next
year. Perhaps we can extend it to a national Spelling Bee? By the way,
there's another movie about Spelling Bee called "Spellbound" which I believe
is worth seeing.
Jerusalem inspector Pat Talshir and participants of her hishtalmut for
Natvie Speaker Learners in Jerusalem dreamed it up and organized it. Pat and
Elana Rechtman set up and ran the final round on Thursday. Shoshana Mazal
and Judy Amsel were responsible for drawing up the rules and spelling lists.
Interested teachers can contact these people to find out more information.
This is how it worked: First we did a spelling bee in our classrooms and
chose one winner from each class. I did it by giving out the list and
setting a date for the class competition. All the pupils stood up and I
asked each one a word. The pupil who was left standing (as soon as they got
the word wrong, they had to sit down) was the winner. I'd like to stress
that I kept the atmosphere friendly. There were no grades. Some of the kids
were not interested and participated just for the game. Others studied the
lists intensively. I really think it was an enjoyable experience. It
certainly brings the topic of spelling back into our consciousness. This
connects to a marvellous lecture on vocabulary acquisition we heard by Dr.
Elisheva Barkon in February.
All the winners from the participating classes (not all the teachers opted
to do this in their classes) participated in a school competition. Our
principal allowed us to buy gift vouchers for the first, second and third
places. Those were the kids that we sent to the final round. Each school was
allowed to send three children from elementary and three from junior high.
Hope this helps,
Ora
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