Preliminary Bee results from April 4, 2009

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE CONTESTANTS!

Thirty-four students, from a cross-section of schools, participated in the second annual 2009 Paris Spelling Bee written preliminary rounds on Saturday April 4^th at the Irish Cultural Center in Paris. The annual event, organized by Gifted in France, is a community-wide enrichment activity open to all children who are 7-13 years-old.  Contestants were grouped according to their age and were given written tests of 15 words in each of the two rounds.  Word list for the Gazelles, (7-9 year-olds) were taken from  Fry’s List of High Frequency Words. The Cheethas (10-13 year-olds) faced a much more difficult list of words.

Following are the names of the contestants with top scores. They, along with the rest of their peers who participated at the written preliminary, will advance to the oral finals on June 7^th at the American Library in Paris.  Due to space restrictions, the June event will only be open to the contestants and their families.

Gazelles Qualifying Round 1: use, like, see, part, much, spell, after, different, learn, school, face, black, horse, circle, nothing.  Gazelles Qualifying Round 2: three, letter, sentence, because, country, father, once, children, questions, travel, paint, third, cannot, beautiful, voice (words were taken from Fry’s 1000 words)

Qualifying Round 1— Precision, strengthen, destitute, foliage, thorough, calibrate, decrepit,  gracious, transparent, calamity, graffiti, latitude, syringe, melancholy, altercation                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Challenge Round 2— Resemblance, ventilation, infinitesimal, malingerer, fulgurant, omnivore, humongous/humungous, fermentation, deciduous, shrapnel, sedentary, omnipresent, locution, accelerate, efficacy. (Cheetahs were not given a word list in advance)

Congratulations to all the contestants who showed great courage and talent in the preliminary rounds. Just getting out of bed on a Saturday morning to attend the written bee deserves an applause! The 34 buzzing bees going to the June finals include the following: GAZELLES— Zoé Benaissa/ Gabriel Bugeaud/Julia Connelly/ Jessica Guy/Niamh Howley// Taeyon Kim/ Lily Lepage/ Loic Lescoat/  Louis Miller/ Emma Newman/ Adria Niessner/Einin O’Donnell/Sarah Perrin-Bergot /Ella Quainton/ Jack  Souami/ Gabrielle Voiriot/and  Daniel Yoo, Seungwoo. CHEETAHS : Ines Avenel/ Emily Boisson de Chazournes/ Brielle Boisson de Chazournes/ Julia Charra/ Shannon Connelly/ Anne-Sophie Fayet/Lydia Field/ Taylor Langdon/ Amèlie Matisse/  Natalie McCafferty/ Cliona O’Donnell/ Paris Pryor/ Caroline Rice/ S. James  Root/ Matthew Rousseau/ Adam Souami and Alexandra Tsovma

NEXT BEE MEETING FOR CONTESTANTS:

Sunday 24 May 2009 13h30-16h00

2009 Paris Spelling Bee MOCK competition

American Library in Paris 10, rue du Général Camou 75007 Paris

All the above mentioned contestants are invited and encouraged to participate. We will go over all the important rules of a spelling bee, techniques to use during an oral bee, and do a mock competition that would resemble an actual oral bee. Come and meet the other bees and  if there’s time we’ll play scrabble and boggle. Please RSVP 2009parisspellingbee@gmail.com to confirm your attendance.

We wish all the contestants luck at the 2009 Paris Spelling Bee finals in June.  The Cheetahs will receive an email with a list of words to study.  The Gazelles should keep working on the Fry’s list. (Source for this list: Dr. Fry’s 1000 Instant Words: The Most Common Words for Teaching, Reading, Writing and Spelling.” To see the complete list of Fry’s list, separated by the 100’s go to: http://candohelperpage.com/sightvocab_1.html#anchor_374

The Hundred’s Word List (FRY) (in PDF format) (Acrobat Reader) First Hundred Second Hundred, Third Hundred Fourth Hundred Firth Hundred Sixth Hundred Seventh Hundred Eigth Hundred Ninth Hundred Tenth Hundred

Great Job!!

The Spelling Bee Team