Skill in spelling just might be a F-A-M-I-L-Y affair.
Cousins Huma Moheyuddin and Wanda Alam studied together for the
San Benito County Spelling Bee by shooting a basketball into the
net. If they made a shot, they’d spell a word. A correct spelling
would earn a point.
Skill in spelling just might be a F-A-M-I-L-Y affair.
Cousins Huma Moheyuddin and Wanda Alam studied together for the San Benito County Spelling Bee by shooting a basketball into the net. If they made a shot, they’d spell a word. A correct spelling would earn a point.
The sixth-graders also recruited the help of their siblings and parents – parents who would tire of studying words before the students did.
“She (Huma) has a lot of energy. … When we studied, I was impressed with how much she could spell, the difficulty of words she knew,” said Huma’s father, Ghulam. “I was expecting her to win.”
She did – and her cousin finished second in the finals of the annual spelling bee’s elementary school division Tuesday night.
Huma, who attends Sacred Heart Parish School, spelled “watermelon” correctly to win the title as the county’s top speller in grades 4-6. Wanda, of Rancho San Justo Middle School, misspelled “assistance” by beginning the word with “ai,” even though she wrote the word correctly.
While the cousins were hoping to finish 1-2, they didn’t expect it.
Wednesday night, Magan Biggs won the spelling bee’s junior high division by correctly spelling “neighborhood.” The Rancho San Justo eighth-grader tape recorded a list of more than 500 words and listened to the tape Tuesday and Wednesday. Each of the 50 students competing in the two divisions received a list of possible words to study.
Biggs placed second in the competition when she was a sixth grader and went to the state spelling bee. She said that experience will help her this year.
“That will benefit me – I’ll do the best I can,” she said.
Bradley Beetz, an eighth grader at Sacred Heart, came in second in the junior high category after misspelling “hippopotamus.” Beetz said he participated in the spelling bee “for the competition and for the fun.”
Many students in both divisions were nervous, said Kim O’Connor, event organizer and educational consultant for the San Benito County Office of Education. Biggs said she was so nervous she was shivering and her teeth were chattering. Many students from the elementary competition cried when they were called out of the competition, O’Connor said.
The top two spellers from each division will represent the county at the California State Spelling Bee Championships. The elementary school competition will be held Saturday, May 5 at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park and the junior high competition will be held Saturday, May 17 at Miller Creek School in San Rafael.
Words come from a list chosen by the state competition and vary in degree of difficulty, O’Connor said. Words for the elementary category vary from “advise” to “cinematographer.” Junior high words vary in difficulty from “brief” to “eminence” to “kaleidoscope.”
Biggs said she was going to record the list of words – about 1,000 of them – to prepare for the state spelling bee.
Ila Foley, last year’s county elementary champion, came in fourth in the junior high category. The top four spellers in both categories received trophies – Moheyuddin, Alam, Olivia Fiori and Ann Mari Rich in the elementary division and Biggs, Beetz, Foley and Danielle Shelton in the junior high division.
Most of the students who do well at the spelling bee are readers because they see the words a lot, O’Connor said.
Biggs agreed. She reads a lot and said reading expands a person’s vocabulary.
“Reading a lot did help me. If you read a lot of books, you get a larger vocabulary,” she said. “You acquire a lot of words from different areas.”
Something that really helped students was letting them write out words before they orally spelled them for the judges. Almost every student wrote out their words, O’Connor said.
There were five judges for the elementary division and three for the junior high category.
The county gives families a stipend for expenses to help pay for the trip to the state competitions, according to Tim Foley, county superintendent of schools. At the state event, O’Connor said prizes can be as high as a $1,000 savings bond.
The finalists
The top 25 students who qualified for the finals of the annual San Benito County Spelling Bee.
Elementary Division
(Grades 4, 5 and 6)
Aromas School
5 – Stephanie Hernandez
Bitterwater-Tully School
6 – Carolyn Madson
Cerra Vista School
5 – Norma Ortiz
Ladd Lane School
4 – Chalseah Ramirez
5 – Ann Mari Rich (4th place)
6 – Geo Coelho
Rancho San Justo Middle School
6 – Wanda Alam (2nd place), Jacob Oates
R.O. Hardin School
5 – Blanca Garcia
Sacred Heart School
4 – Jake Hunter, Kellen O’Laughlin
5 – Colin Langley
6 – Jamie Blatter, Justin Hunter, Huma Moheyuddin (1st place), Derek Panger
San Juan School
5 – Glen Alameda
6 – Olivia Fiori (3rd place), Jenny Laverone
Seventh Day Adventist School
4 – Tony Culler, Jahziel Gonzalez
Spring Grove School
5 – Will Singleton
6 – Ryan Shorey
Tres Pinos School
4 – Scott McFall
6 – Gareth McFall
Junior High Division
(Grades 7 and 8)
Bitterwater-Tully School
8 – Brysan O’Connor, Shane O’Connor
Cienega School
7 – Ila Foley (4)
Grape Arbor Academy
8 – Cody Martin
Marguerite Maze Middle School
7 – Philip Caltabiano
8 – Peter Pham, Zach Rodriguez
Rancho San Justo Middle School
7 – Ashley Colton, Nicole Corlett, Emily Kortsen, Nick Marsh, Joseph Wilson
8 – Magan Biggs (1st place)
Sacred Heart School
7 – Jordan Archer
8 – Bradley Beetz (2nd place), Samantha Ceglia, Morgan O’Laughlin, Melissa Ruble, Danielle Shelton (3rd place)
San Juan School
8 – Delaina Greer, Rebecca Lee, Alice Medland
Southside School
7 – Nathalie Ferare
8 – Tony Derose
Spring Grove School
7 – Marc Frelier
