Spelling Bee - How Well Would You Do?

It wasn't until the third round of the Maine State Spelling Bee this afternoon that one of the students missed a word: holster . . . the student hesitated, asked for a definition, alternate pronunciations, and to have it used in a sentence. Then, after a deep breath, finally spelling it  h-o-l-s-t-r . . . oh, how disappointing.

It's not easy trying to spell a word without the aid of pencil to paper to figure it out. I stumbled with hundreth, uncertain whether it should be h-u-n-d-r-e-d-t-h, with the "d" . . . didn't seem right, and it wasn't, the correct spelling is h-u-n-d-r-e-t-h.

Here are some of the words the students had to spell: mohair, sloth, slav, poi, cockatoo, boodle, sultan, transect, and tithe (the word that would make the second student stumble with t-y-t-h-e).

We'll check later to see who won today's Bee, and post the results.

Update: Eighth grader, Syra Gutow, was the winner. Syra said she practiced four hours a day with the spelling bee's 1,200-word study guide. In order to win, Syra had to spell two words correctly: cynosure and menhaden. She aced both. Well done.