One signature programme of my school’s English Department is the Spelling Bee, and I have had the privilege to helm it for the past two years.

The first thing I did when I was in charge was to ask every member individually how they envisioned Spelling Bee to be. I then came up with the mission statement:

To let students have fun applying methods to spell words relevant to their lives

Getting this sorted out helped me make decisions. If something wasn’t fun, didn’t involve methods, & was considered low-utility, it wouldn’t be included. Period. Moving on.

My predecessor and his team released the Spelling Bee words so that motivated students could prepare for it. But I thought this bordered on rote memorisation, so I scrapped it. Together with my Head of Department and team mates, I implemented a structured approach in which:

NEW in 2024! Look Say Cover Write Check will be taught to lower secondary students as a method to help them spell high frequency words and / or phonetically irregular words.

Yes, I know you have been scratching your head and asking yourself how Spelling Bee comes into the picture. After teaching students these spelling methods, we put them through the fire. 🔥 Each class would send two representatives to take part in the competition. The best spellers would beat their peers in 4 stages (Preliminary, Quarter Finals, Semi Finals & Finals) to emerge champions. For the first three rounds, students typically competed against one another at our library or auditorium. But for the finals, they would compete live in front of watching staff and students. Suffice it to say that pride and glory was on the line!

To streamline planning, we would only have three stages this year: Preliminary, Semi Finals and Finals. It would be cool to see if we can hype up the Spelling Bee such that the finals reaches a climax. A rousing finale.

I still remember the Preliminary Round during the first year, in which I spontaneously explained to the students how to spell certain words. They were engaged in listening to me! The energy was electrifying - the collective Awws and gasps, their spirits reverberating in accordance to my words, I loved it!

Unfortunately, I never quite got to experience this energy again. I took care to explain certain spelling methods during the finals but later received feedback that perhaps some fun has been sucked out of the process.

We had an audience round, in which our Spelling Bee mascot went around to ask one student from each level to spell a word. That took up more time than I expected, which led to me rushing through the upper secondary round like mad.

With one year of experience under my belt, I was keen to concoct a secret sauce. So, I decided to focus on fun instead since the feedback I received from the previous year was that it was kinda academic-driven. So, we initiated certain changes:

Given that my 4-year-old son just asked me how to spell triceratops yesterday, I am profoundly humbled by the realisation that kids don’t care whether a word is high-utility or not. They just want to learn how to spell it.

In lieu of the Audience Round, we carried out a Teacher’s Round. Five staff, including our vice-principal, were put on the hot seat and tasked to spell some Gen Z slang words.

Restless students came alive. I could perceptibly sense the shift in mood. It felt like winter animals waking up from their hibernation. They were so thrilled at watching their teachers spell words like slay, no cap & rizz.

It must have been especially satisfying for them to see all five tributes spell rizz wrongly. Ngl, I would have spelt it wrongly too; to me, it’s just a nonsense word. But I nonetheless derived a sense of schadenfreude. I got the rousing finale I wanted!

This year, I humbly retire from being the I/C, which explains why I’m spending so much time writing this. But I will be around to make waves as the 2nd I/C. Stay tuned for more fun iterations.

P.S: Archiving all Spelling Bee-related photos on my phone