4 schools in divisional round
“Finally, the divisional round," exclaimed an excited Shadman, a tenth grader of Scholastica school who earned himself a place among the three winners after spelling “condescend” right at The Daily Star Spelling Bee contest yesterday.
All he is eyeing now is becoming the best "Spelling Bee" in the country.
“I'm proud of all the time I spent practising [spelling] and I hope I can make my school proud," Shadman said following the contest held on the school premises at Uttara in the capital.
Champs21 crew's expedition to bring out three top spellers from Scholastica proved quite different than earlier thought. A total of 36 students took part in the battle.
The first round started off with fairly easy words, but seven of the spellers got knocked out due to nervousness and not using the clues coming along.
Since the Spelling Bee contest follows the British spelling, a mix up between American and British styles of spelling for words like “programme” and “organisation” saw some participants eliminated as well.
The unusual word “brouhaha” indeed created a lot of brouhaha all around the room in round two, with a student spelling it right and the crowd applauding in excitement.
Following a domino effect of knockout of spellers in quick succession, end of round three brought out the top nine spellers.
Fahmeed Khan of grade 10, who had to spell “imbroglio”, was quite hazy about the pronunciation and used the clues well to become one of the three winners.
“[The word] 'imbroglio' was fitting for me, considering the situation I was in then. I asked for an alternative pronunciation and I got “im-bro-lio, so confusing," said Fahmeed, who produced good laughter among the audience in dealing with the word.
The contest concluded with Shadman Sakib and Fahmeed Khan Sheehan of class 10 and Mithul Roy of class eight coming out as the winners qualifying for the divisional round.
Majed Abdur Rahman, the spelling coordinator for the children and a physics teacher of Scholastica, cheered his spellers with great spirit all the way.
“I'm very proud of my students. Though it's sad many of them couldn't spell many easy words correctly, maybe because we weren't aware of the rules at first. But I'm very happy with them today for their great performance," he said.
Delhi Public School being the next to hold the contest was slightly the better performer of the day, with six rounds taking place and requiring two tiebreakers to decide the winners.
Tahiat Goni of class six, Nubaira Forkan of class seven and Mahia Chowdhury of class six made it to the divisional round from the school.
The competition also took place in BAF Shaheen English School that sent, after a hard fought battle among its students, Farhana Rabbi Ruponti and Sadia Sabreen of class ten and Tasnia Ibnat of class nine to the divisional round.
And Maliha Rajwana Haque of class nine, Sadia Hashim of class eight and Yusra Iqbal of class eight made it to the divisional round from Mirpur Girls' Ideal Laboratory Institute.
Spelling Bee online round continues till March 10 at www.champs21.com.
A minimum of 500 spellers are to be taken into the divisional round coming up soon.
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