Bee champs’ quiz spells trouble for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese

The best young spellers have stumped* the Prime Minister in a grilling* that would put the opposition* to shame.

Zachary Cheng, 13, Ozi Egesi, 11, and 10-year-old Joanne Lee were named the champs across the three aged groups in the Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee this year.

Part of their prize was the chance to meet Anthony Albanese at Parliament House and put his knowledge to the test.

“Oh no,” Mr Albanese said, offering to spell Prime Minister instead for the group.

Perth student Joanne asked if he could spell vespers, a service of an evening prayer. But Mr Albanese confused the word for the similarly sounding Vespas, the motor scooters.

Unfortunately, things didn’t get any easier for the Prime Minister, after Ozi decided to throw him a curveball*.

“This is a German word. It means state of consciousness*: bewusstseinslage,” Ozie said.

“I’m not even going to try!” the Prime Minister laughed.

Ozi, who scored a perfect 30/30 in the years 5-6 group, got it on the first try.

Focus then turned to Melbourne student Zach, who the Prime Minister pleaded with to ask him to spell an English word.

However he didn’t get four letters into magnanimous, meaning generous or forgiving, before Zach jumped in to correct him.

The spelling whiz kids and their families capped off their visit on November 21 with a personal tour of Mr Albanese’s office inside Parliament House.

All three students credited their love of reading as the key to their spelling success.

The Prime Minister told the spellers his mum had also instilled* in him a passion for reading as a kid.

“I read everything I could,” he said, before revealing his favourite book was Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.

More than 61,000 students from 1060 schools across the country signed up for this year’s Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee, which is run by Kids News and News Corp Australia.

Kids News editor Kamahl Cogdon said the competition would return “bigger and better” in 2023.

“It’s about fostering a love of learning and making education fun,” Ms Cogdon said.

News Corp’s community ambassador* Penny Fowler said Kids News was part of the organisation’s commitment to “helping to improve childhood literacy”.

“We believe every child should have access to news from trusted sources. It really is about us investing in future generations,” she said.

GLOSSARY

• stumped: be unable to answer a question because it is too hard
• grilling: asking someone a lot of questions
• opposition: the other major political party that is not in government
• curveball: something, such as a question, that is unexpected and surprising
• consciousness: state of being awake, aware
• instilled: put a feeling, idea or principle gradually into someone’s mind
• ambassador: person who speaks on behalf of an organisation, community or country

EXTRA READING

Meet this year’s Spelling Bee champions

PM spells out importance of the Bee

QUICK QUIZ

1. What word did Joanne ask the Prime Minister to spell?
2. From which language is the word Ozi asked the Prime Minister to spell?
3. What do the three winners credit their spelling success to?
4. What is Anthony Albanese’s favourite book?
5. How many students signed up to this year’s Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee?

LISTEN TO THIS STORY

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Prime Minister’s spelling test
If you were lucky enough to score a meeting with the Prime Minister, what five words would you test his spelling on?

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

If you were allowed to raise one question or have a five-minute discussion with Prime Minister Albanese, what would you choose to ask or discuss?

Time: allow 25 minutes to complete this activity
Curriculum Links: English, Personal and social, Critical and creative thinking

2. Extension
Plan to run your own school or class spelling bee event. You could do it as a fun activity during literacy, or open it up to a wider audience by doing a lunchtime competition and final at a school assembly or the like.

Work with a partner to plan your event:

Date:
Time:
Activities:
Year levels:
How the competition would run:
How the final would run:
Prizes or certificates:

Discuss plans with your teacher or principal to see if viable.

You can use the Kids News Spelling Bee poster as your starting word list. Find it HERE

Time: allow 20 minutes to complete this activity 
Curriculum Links: English, Personal and social, Critical and Creative thinking

VCOP ACTIVITY
For the love of learning
Making learning fun, enjoyable and accessible for all students is a teacher’s goal. Describe how your teacher (who is anyone that teaches you), has done something a little different to make learning fun.

If you can’t think of anything, come up with a fun way to teach a skill to someone else yourself.

What would you teach them? How would you do it in a fun, enjoyable way?