PRINCIPALS, teachers and students of schools that participated in the recently concluded Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF) Inter-School Spelling Bee Competition are singing high praises for the initiative.

The spelling bee competition is an initiative under phase two of the Integrated Community Development Project (ICPD II), being funded by the Government of Jamaica. It was geared towards supporting literacy development and building learning enthusiasm within students who attend schools in the targeted ICDP II communities.

Students nine to 12 years old from grades four, five and six were eligible to participate in the competition.

Grade six teacher at Lethe Primary and Infant School in St James, Tasmania York, told JIS News that the competition did more than help her students learn how to spell.

“For those who participated, especially for one student who had a speech issue, I realised that it helped him a lot. After doing the spelling bee, he was now able to pronounce some of the words properly,” said York.

She further highlighted the fact that every child learns differently and with spelling, students are able to bring what they learn to other subject areas, including mathematics.

Lethe Primary and Infant is one of the 12 schools that participated in the competition. Others are Hope Valley Experimental Primary School, August Town Primary, Greenwich Town Primary, St Andrew Primary, Edward Seaga Primary, Treadlight Primary, Anchovy Primary, Roehampton Primary, Bickersteth Primary and Infant, Mt Salem Primary, and Salt Spring Primary and Infant.

Speaking at the awards ceremony, which took place at the end of the competition in June at the Medallion Hall Hotel in Kingston, principal at the Hope Valley Experimental Primary School in St Andrew, Anthony Grant, said the life of each participant in the competition has been impacted positively.

“I don’t want any of us to put it in any kind of narrow confines that this is just a spelling competition, because it isn’t. I can honestly tell you what the students have gone through and what this has done for all the students; it’s not just building their vocabulary,” said Grant.

He further noted that throughout the competition each student showed a level of preparedness that even if they failed to advance to the next round, they all “left with their heads held high”.

“We are extremely happy for the competition but more so the kind of exposure that JSIF has given to our children. On a Saturday, where better place that we could be than to just revel in the joy of what this does for our students,” Grant added.

Meanwhile, senior manager, social development at JSIF, Mona Sue-Ho told JIS News that the spelling bee competition adds to JSIF’s continued investment in the education sector, the bulk of which has been infrastructure development.

“To complement that investment, we looked at activities targeting students — in terms of helping them to reconnect with the curriculum,” said Sue-Ho. She added that JSIF recognised that the students were returning to the classroom after being out of the physical space for approximately two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We wanted to find a fun way for them to reconnect with learning and to generate the excitement of competition and so the idea of the [Inter-School Spelling Bee] Competition came about,” Sue-Ho shared.

Some 199 students participated in the competition with 99 advancing to the semi-final and 51 to the final. Schools were placed in two zones, those from Kingston & St Andrew and Clarendon were in Zone 1 while those from St James were placed in Zone 2.

“What we did, essentially, was to have four rounds of competition. We wanted to give each grade level an opportunity to excel. So, what we did was to divide the competition into students in grade four, five and six,” said Sue-Ho, adding that each school would have a champion from each grade.

Winner of the Grade Five category in Zone 1, Tia-Kaye Richards of Greenwich Town Primary School, shared that she had to juggle the competition and her schoolwork but is happy that it all paid off in the end.

“I was so busy with school and home I did not dare look at the paper. The night before the competition that’s the time I sat down and started studying. The next day, I studied at school. This time, I stood with others and spelt the words, most kids were eliminated leaving me as the winner. As happy as I was, I did not show any excitement on my face, but I felt happy inside,” she said.

Grade five champion for Zone 2, Rodrick Sterling of Mount Salem Primary and Infant School in St James, said that the journey to becoming the champion was fun and challenging.

“Every week leading up to each round, I would practise my words at home with my sister and at school with my teacher and classmates, plus preparing for PEP exams, doing my normal schoolwork and studying and presenting a poem,” he shared.

“I am very proud of myself and the whole experience was fun. I got to go somewhere new and increase my vocabulary. The spelling bee was awesome,” the grade five champion added.

Both winners thanked JSIF for hosting the competition.