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Sign drawn by Emily |
Before we get to March’s meeting, I’d like to acknowledge Nairit Sarkar, a current speller, who made it to spelling bee regionals on March 26th-- just a day ago. Details on the Collin County Spelling Bee and the winner of the bee yesterday are posted below. Congrats to not only Nairit, but Neha, our mentor, and all of those that participated!
March’s meeting was an extension to the Latin words our spellers covered in our last meeting, bringing back previous words such as “canine” and “corpuscle” and mixing in French and Spanish originated words along with them. Our mentors decided to twist up this meeting a little, and instead of doing things the traditional Spell Success way-- crosswords, a mini-bee, speech-writing-- they added in new activities like displaying words visually by drawing them, acting words with charades, and a little non-spelling activity with prizes!
After a quick “welcome back” from our mentors, our spellers zoomed right into the crosswords and sentence completion practices. Our spellers really knew their stuff; they breezed through French-originated words such as “bureaucracy” meaning “a large group of people who are involved in running a government but who are not elected” and Spanish-originated words that are rarely seen such as “sarsaparilla” which means “a sweetened drink that is flavored with a substance made from the root of a plant”. Thanks Jacqueline for providing both our mentors and spellers with word lists. Our lives have been made easier.
Afterwards, our youngest speller and the 5th grade group moved on to the vocab card game where they chose a word and drew a picture of that word. For example, one of our spellers recreated the Spanish word “flotilla” meaning “a group of small ships” by depicting...well…..a group of small ships. Meanwhile, the oldest group participated in a little competitive game between Michelle and Shining on definitions and pronunciations. It was a very close match; Michelle was victorious with one point greater than Shining. Then, both the 5th grade group and the oldest group acted out words by playing charades, and even some of our mentors joined in. The word “saboteur” which means “a person who destroys or damages something deliberately” was demonstrated by randomly flailing arms everywhere. One speller demonstrated “flamboyant” meaning “having a very noticeable quality that attracts a lot of attention” by standing there smiling.
As a little break, Rooshi had the 5th grade group list as many animals as they could in a set time-limit. Keran won with 35 animals listed, winning an alligator (a word included in this meeting’s word lists) flash drive! As a conclusion to the meeting, our mentors had our spellers write a story using at least 5 of the words. Since there were so many spellers in the middle age group, I couldn’t get all of the stories without all of them feeling left out. But Michelle and Shining’s stories I did manage to record, and they’re posted above!
And of course, we wrapped up with everyone being rewarded with candy! March’s meeting was a great success, and there was much we covered in the limited time we had. Our mentors had an enjoyable time, and we really hope our spellers did, too! We’re hoping to make our meetings more consistent, so the next meeting won’t be in too long! Happy Easter! :(III)-
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Thank you Allison for writing such an interesting article for us! I enjoyed reading it, even though I was in the meeting, I missed some of the things you mentioned. I'm looking forward to read more of your writings!
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