Biology Spelling Bee Competition

After a brilliant inaugural year last year for the Royal Society of Biology’s (RSB) Spelling Bee, the competition returned this year with over 240 schools participating from around the world. The Spelling Bee competition is an RSB Outreach and Engagement Grant Scheme funded activity, run by Jon Hale, Assistant Head, at Beaulieu Convent School Jersey.

Over 70 students participated in this year's Biology Spelling Bee at Kendrick. The following article about the qualifying and finals round is written by Deepti in Year 7.

The Biology week Spelling Bee was probably one of the most exciting things I have done since I joined in year 7! 
 
The Qualifiying Round: Mrs Kenward gave us a word list that included some of the words which could come up in the Spelling Bee.  The list included words such as: amylase; langerhans; phylogeny; or one that was included in my list of words; abiotic. We had 2 days to prepare for the qualifying round. It was very exciting because I have never done a spelling bee before, so this was my first experience of one!  On Thursday 26th September, a few students from Year 7 and 8 (other year groups had different timings) for the qualification round. Later that day, the finalists received an email from Mrs Kenward informing us that we had got into the finals! 

The Finals
The finals for the Year 11s and over were the very next day, but for everyone in Year 10 and under, they had 4 days to prepare!  For me, it was very intimidating, so I practised very hard, also asking my parents and friends at school to test me.  On Tuesday the 1st of October during the second break, we went to B2 for the finals. First up were the two Year 7 students. We were given a word, then we had to say it, spell it, then say it again. In total, there were 2 minutes, and we had to spell as many words as possible. 

Finalists from each Year group are listed below - well done to everyone who took part!

Year 7: Ayanna, Deepti and Janani 
Year 8: Sanvi
Year 9: Mudra 
Year 10: Hasini and Netraa
Year 11: Faith and Holly 
Year 12: Eryena and Mansa (both top scorers of Kendrick with a total of 27 words spelt correctly in 2 minutes!)
Year 13: Gioia and Ananya

If you’d like to have a go yourself, here is the word list from this year’s competition: