Delayed Until the Fall, This Year’s Spelling Bee is As Ambitious As Ever!

This year, our annual Spelling Bee was held in September. Although it’s usually a late spring event, school director Cara Nesser wasn’t able to visit because of COVID-19 restrictions. Held just before the start of our new fall term, the spelling bee thus came with an extra challenge: the students had to remember vocabulary words from last year, and study them again. 

For the first time, the spelling bee also coincided with a visit from Mitch and Janine Albom, both of whom agreed that even they weren’t sure how to spell some of the words!

Despite her rigorous attempts, Ms. Cara could not whittle down any class to just one winner even with words like crustacean, Platyhelminthes, Cnidarian, catalyst, ecclesiastical and the all time most dreaded word: Deoxyribonucleic acid  (the scientific name of DNA, in case you folks at home didn’t know!)  Even Mitch was sweating out this one!

Our oldest group, Secondary 3, not only had to spell the words, but define their words as well. If there was any question as to the validity of the answers, Mitch served as the “panel of judges” to determine if the answer qualified. He looked up dictionary definitions online, in real time, and fortunately, with one exception, all the answers were right.  All of the words we use in our Spelling Bees are taken from actual classwork—no random words are added to the Bee.

It was an exciting Spelling Bee, followed by our annual “school opening” ice cream party, and this year, a special concert presented by our two in- house rock bands! 

Now we are busy in school, learning MORE words for next year…

Check out the winners gallery!

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> Read an important update from school director Cara Nesser on the impact of COVID-19 on the Mission’s school, and the resilience of our teachers and students!

Bonus video – do you know the helping verbs?