Ten year-old Naomi Pearce credits lots of study and practice with helping her finish 27th out of 52 competitors at a provincewide spelling bee recently.
Pitted against students in Grades 4 to 8, the Grade 5 River Valley student sucessfully adanced to the fifth round of the regional competiton for the Postmedia Canspell 2012 national spelling bee in Calgary March 3.
“I'm very, very proud,” said Pearce.
Out of the thousands of words she praticed spelling in the weeks leading up to the competition, it was a word with 16th century origins that knocked her out of the running for a national spelling bee title.
“The word I spelled wrong was ‘frontispiece',” said Pearce, who when asked, can now spell it without heisitation.
Canspell is a Postmedia Network literacy initiative that launched in 2005 and is designed to engage middle school students (Grades 4-8) by celebrating excellence in academic achievement and encouraging positive study habits.
Individual schools across the province held spellathons earlier this year. If the winner sucessfully passed a written test, they qualified for the regionals, held March 3 in Calgary.
This year, middle school students from 52 schools competed in Alberta's regionals.
Competitions are being held in all 10 provinces. Regional winners advance to nationals.
Pearce said she worked hard to prepare for the competitions. Her startegy was to study the practice words provided through Canspell and have her family to quiz her.
“Yah, it paid off,” she said.
Her practice words were categorized by language of origin.
“I had trouble with the German ones,” she said.
She said she was filled with excitement on the day of the regional competition and admittedly was a little nervous.
In the audience gathered in the university auditorium, was her mother Kayla, her great aunt, a cousin, and the vice-principal of her school.
One by one, the 52 competitors were called up to spell: if the word was correct, they moved on to the next round.
By correctly spelling ‘confidence', ‘providence', ‘syntax', and ‘formidable', Pearce beat out 25 other competitors.
“One thing the host said when she spelled confidence was ‘..and Naomi you spelled it with such confidence,'” said her mother Kayla.
She said her daughter is used to being on stage and performing in front of an audience as she's had lots of practice performing as a ballet dancer.
Pearce can now add competitive speller to her list of accomplishments.
“She's only in Grade 5 and to go on and do so well, well I don't know...we're pretty proud,” said Kayla.
"She's only in Grade 5 and to go on and do so well, well I don't know...we're pretty proud."Kayla PearceSpellathon competitor's mother
