Passion un-Bee-lievable as Spelling Bee welcomes record students

A record number of teachers have signed up for the free, online Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee, registering a record number of students across years 3-8.

Over 63,000 stand counting are currently competing in the national school round. And there is still time to enter and play – the school round ends this Friday 23 August.

Run by Kids News, the Bee’s busiest day for page views coincided with the release of NAPLAN results, with the Bee clocking over 51,000 views on August 14 alone. Teacher, school and student numbers had all hit new records by the close of business Thursday.

While 2554 teachers at 1120 schools nationwide are already running the Bee, federal Education Minister Jason Clare encouraged all teachers and eligible* students to have a go.

“Just like our returning athletes had to practise for the Olympics, practising spelling is just as important,” Minister Clare said.

“Learning to spell, learning to read: those foundational skills are what sets you up for the future.

“Just like our Aussie Olympians did in Paris, I encourage every teacher and schoolkid to ‘go for gold’ and have a crack at the PM’s Spelling Bee.”

News Corp Australia’s community ambassador Penny Fowler said the PM’s Spelling Bee was an important part of Kids News’ commitment to developing universal childhood literacy*.

“Spelling is an absolute cornerstone for success in the classroom and in the years beyond,” Mrs Fowler said.

“This new record is a wonderful testament* to the hard work teachers from across the nation perform daily and underlines increasing awareness of the need for our children to grow into top spellers.”

Kids News editor and competition administrator Diana Jenkins said enhanced* user features meant the coming week was plenty of time to take part.

“The Bee’s digital parental consent form and bulk student upload features have been a big hit with teachers,” she said. “Less admin makes it so easy for more schools to build spelling skills in a fun way that gets kids excited.”

Kids taking part in the Bee in the coming week can warm up with classic word games like Scrabble, Upwords, Boggle, Jumble, Wordle, Scattergories, and even the old school favourite Hangman.

Popular among young and old for decades, research shows that playing word games brings benefits for the whole family.

Raising Children Network director Derek McCormack said that family rituals*, such as playing games together, were valuable ways to build and maintain family connections.

“Family rituals give both parents and children a sense of security, identity and belonging, because they’re special things that have special meaning for the family unit,” he said.

“They create shared memories, and it builds family bonds when parents show children that they value and enjoy spending time with them.”

From a wellbeing perspective, word games could also be useful in producing a sense of accomplishment and helping reduce stress and anxiety, said ReachOut clinical lead Linda Williams.

“When even Olympians are turning to them for moments of mindfulness in stressful times, you know they can be powerful tools,” she said.

ACU’s Australian Centre for the Advancement of Literacy director, Professor Rauno Parrila, said that playing word games at home helped with literacy, children’s reading, writing, and vocabulary, as it brought “literacy to life.”

“Playing alphabet-based games including those that help children to identify and sound out letters helps to reinforce what they are learning … by putting it into real-world contexts*,” Prof Parrila said.

According to Prof Parrila, recent evidence from researchers in Spain suggests that word games can improve academic and cognitive* skills among students, especially executive functions* that are important for regulating behaviour.

Ms Williams suggested kids try different games at home to find ones that appeal to them.

Teachers can register and students across Years 3-8 can play the national school round of the free, fun, online PM’s Spelling Bee until 5pm AEST on Friday 23 August. Visit spelling-bee.com.au or kidsnews.com.au for more information and to enter.

POLL

GLOSSARY

• eligible: meets all requirements necessary to take part
• universal childhood literacy: goal of every child being able to read and write
• testament: proof, evidence, shows that something is the case
• enhanced: improved, added to, strengthened
• rituals: ways of doing something special or behaviours that follow the same order each time
• contexts: situations, backgrounds, environments relevant to a particular person, event or thing
• cognitive: the mental process involved in knowing, learning, and understanding thing
• executive functions: set of mental skills including working memory, flexible thinking and self-control

EXTRA READING

Is English down the ‘skibidi toilet’?

Letters worth writing home about

Kids go for gold in Spelling Bee

QUICK QUIZ

1. How many students have been registered to play the PM’s Spelling Bee so far?
2. How many teachers and schools have registered students to take part?
3. How many page views did the Bee site have on August 14 alone?
4. What are five word games that students could play this week to warm up?
5. When does the school round of the PM’s Spelling Bee close?

LISTEN TO THIS STORY

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Buy this game!
Choose your favourite word game – perhaps it is one of the ones mentioned in the news story, or maybe you like to play one that is not on the list. Create a catalogue advertisement for your game that will persuade others to buy it. Include some of the reasons that word games are beneficial (mentioned in the story) within your advertisement.

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

2. Extension
Invent a word game of your own! You could use an existing game as inspiration with some modified rules or create something completely new and unique. Clearly write the rules then create any required game boards and pieces. Test your game out with a friend.

Time: allow 40 minutes to complete this activity
Curriculum Links: English

VCOP ACTIVITY
Read with Kung Fu punctuation
Pair up with the article between you and stand up to make it easy to demonstrate your Kung Fu punctuation.

Practise reading one sentence at a time. Now read it again, while acting out the punctuation as you read.

Read and act three sentences before swapping with your partner.

Take two turns each.

Now ask your partner to read a sentence out loud while you try and act out the punctuation. Can you keep up? Swap over?

Try acting out two sentences – are you laughing yet?