Mark ‘Frosty’ Winterbottom urges students to join PM’s Spelling Bee

Fast machines, lightning laps and chequered flags made for a pretty distracting daydream when V8 Supercars legend Mark Winterbottom was a boy.

As a young “westie” at Crawford Public School in Sydney, Winterbottom “just always wanted to race cars”.

“So how does English and spelling … relate to race cars?” he said. “You could never tell yourself as a student that you needed to have good English skills to race cars.”

But h-i-n-d-s-i-g-h-t is a beautiful thing, with the Bathurst 1000 winner eventually adding commentator*, mentor*, voiceover actor – and now writer – to his driver CV.

As the fifth annual Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee school round enters its second week with over 24,000 students across years 3-8 already registered, Winterbottom said Kids News’ free, online, classroom competition was “a great little challenge and life’s about challenging yourself”, adding that spelling was “so important … I never knew it was this important when I was at school”.

After favouring maths at school, Winterbottom said he had been “upskilling” his English skills ever since. The “big Cars fan” even credits foundation literacy skills with his memorable appearance as “Frosty”, his namesake* Aussie race car character in Cars 2.

“This is where sometimes adventures take you places you never expect to go,” he said. “Racing cars is so far away from a Hollywood Disney Pixar movie but this is where worlds collide … and you make the right impression.

“It’s how you articulate* words … and like these kids who meet the prime minister (after winning the PM’s Spelling Bee), one meeting can change it.

“Three months later, Cars 2 is released and your car’s up on the screen. It was pretty cool.”

Raising his three sons Oliver, 14, Austin, 12, and Elliot, 6, in Melbourne with wife Renee, Winterbottom is laser-focused on the boys’ literacy skills. He loves watching them play basketball, building sportsmanship and mateship, but said the need for spelling and comprehension skills was everywhere, including the track, court and field.

“In (the boys’) basketball … we’ll get sheets of defence plays, attack plays, that they have to read, study, remember,” he said.

An active child himself, Winterbottom said it wasn’t until he “got into the real world” that he realised how essential spelling, reading and writing skills were if he ever wanted to succeed.

“My first ever boss – at Tickford Racing when I raced for Ford – was a billionaire,” Winterbottom said. “He owned Aston Martin road cars, he owned a Formula One team, he flew in on a helicopter.

“He was a very, very well-spoken person. I remember as a 23-year-old thinking, ‘I have to pronounce every word correctly’.

“So I learnt very early on that you had to pronounce your words (well). You had to think about what you were saying, make sure the words that you were using actually meant what you (wanted) to say.

“You’ve got to have a certain high level of understanding of English, be articulate and pronounce and be representative of all those brands. I realised how important it was.”

As for that iconic* turn in Cars 2, Winterbottom said, “you have to put in the effort at school”.

“That’s what I’m telling the kids: don’t rely on AI because on the spur of the moment, it’s not there for you.

“When you get into commentary, you have to be very (careful) with your wording and how you pronounce things on live TV; there’s no second take, what you say goes to air.

“I spent the 20 years while I was racing … trying to upskill. English was definitely one I wish I had spent a lot more time on. We push the kids very hard on English now and they’re doing very well.”

With HarperCollins publishing his co-written memoir, Frosty, next month, Winterbottom said the process brought him “relief to just write stuff down”.

“Lots of people have very similar upbringings,” he said. “Motorsport might not be what they’re trying to achieve, but they might go, ‘Well, he turned that into a positive, maybe I can do the same’.”

A self-made success story from humble roots, for Winterbottom, the need for foundation literacy was elementary and universal.

“You always want to improve,” he said. “My advice to the kids (doing the Bee) is just do the best you can. Prepare well. If you do the best you can, you’re competing against yourself and no one else.”

Registrations and the school round of the Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee close at 5pm AEST on Friday 22 August. Visit spelling-bee.com.au, kidsnews.com.au

• ABOUT THE BEE
  The Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee is a free, online competition for students in Years 3-8.
• Students compete at their school in three levels: Green level for Years 3-4, Orange level for Years 5-6 and Red level for Years 7-8.
• They get 30 randomly selected words from their competition level and have 25 seconds to type each answer. The students with the most correct words in the fastest time progress to finals.
• Teachers can register their students until August 22, when the school round ends.
• State and territory finals will be held September 1-5 and the national finals on September 10-11.
• The national champion in each age group wins a trip to Canberra to meet the Prime Minister, an iPad, HarperCollins book pack and a $1000 voucher for their school.

Details: kidsnews.com.au, spelling-bee.com.au

POLL

GLOSSARY

• commentator: a reporter for radio or television who describes and remarks on an event as it happens, especially a sporting contest
• mentor: someone experienced at a job who supports and advises someone with less experience to help them develop
• namesake: a person or thing having the same name as another person or thing
• articulate: expressing thoughts and feelings easily and clearly
• iconic: very famous or popular, especially being considered to represent particular opinions or a particular time

EXTRA READING

Albo celebrates Bee’s big birthday

Where are our Bee champs now?

From go-karting kid to F1 crown

QUICK QUIZ

1. What is the name of Mark Winterbottom’s character in Cars 2?
2. How many students have been registered so far in the Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee?
3. What can Winterbottom remember thinking as a 23-year-old driver?
4. What subject did Winterbottom favour at school?
5. What was Winterbottom’s advice for kids across Years 3-8 doing the PM’s Spelling Bee?

LISTEN TO THIS STORY

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Think about your future
Identify 3 different careers that you think you might enjoy when you are grown up. Try to choose 3 jobs that are quite different from one another.

For each of these jobs, write a paragraph to describe how having strong English language skills could contribute to you becoming successful. Give consideration to all of the ways in which each career might require you to give and receive communication.

Time: allow 25 minutes to complete this activity
Curriculum Links: English

2. Extension
Choose one of the careers you wrote about above. Create a ‘mock’ document that a person in that career might need to produce, that demonstrates the need for strong English language skills.

Examples:

Doctor – write a mock medical report clearly documenting a patient’s symptoms and treatment.

Musician – write the lyrics for a song.

Politician – write a speech for parliament about a current community issue.

Time: allow 30 minutes to complete this activity
Curriculum Links: English

VCOP ACTIVITY
Exercise the body and the mind
Exercise is not only important for the body, but it’s a lot of fun as well. Let’s bring more exercise into classroom learning by creating a VCOP PE game.

You can add a VCOP challenge to pretty much any game, and it’s a great way to encourage the teacher to let the class play more games.

Here is an example to get you started, then you create one of your own.

VCOP dodgeball
The normal rules of dodgeball apply. Two teams throw soft balls at each other and if you get hit, you have to sit out. The team who knocks out all the players on the other team, wins.

VCOP challenge: when you get eliminated, collect a mini-whiteboard and a basic clause from the sidelines. Up-level the sentence (make it better) by adding VCOP. When you show the teacher your completed sentence, you can return to the game.

Play for a set amount of time and the team with the most players left on the court wins.

Support: use the “Up-Level It” card set – players have to complete one card from the set instead of completing all VCOP challenges.

What can you come up with?