Spelling contest teaches Darwen children teamwork (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Spelling contest teaches Darwen children teamwork

11:25am Monday 30th June 2008 in

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HARRY goes back to school for Darwen’s annual spelling championship.

SAM WELLER had an easy-going acquaintance with the difficulties of spelling.

In Dickens’ Pickwick Papers he cheerily informs the judge who had enquired whether he spelt his name with a “V” or a “W”: “That depends upon the taste and fancy of the speller, my lord.”

Well said, Sam. But it’s not that simple. Try applying for jobs in an illiterate scrawl liberally sprinkled with strings of letters that have never seen the inside of a dictionary.

Presuming that your target audience has a nodding interest in the English language it’s likely that you’ll struggle to climb onto the employment ladder.

This was one of the homilies passed on to the pairs of youngsters who took part last week in the annual Darwen Primary Schools spelling championship.

It wasn’t needed; they had already got the message and the standard was excellent.

Darwen Rotary Club sponsor the competition and a pal who is a member suggested I call into St Barnabas’ School to watch the proceedings unfold.

“You’ll be impressed,” he told me, knowing that spelling is a hobby of mine. And I certainly was.

Journalist Harold Heys came up with the idea of gathering the best spellers from the local schools for a grand final towards the end of the school year and he runs the show.

The Rotary Club put up the trophy and they also donate £80 every year for individual cups for the winners and runners-up and a £50 prize for the winning school.

There has been a different winner every year. Avondale won the first from Turton & Edgworth, then St Peter’s and then Tockholes won with St Barnabas’ runners-up each time and this year the championship went to Ashleigh who narrowly beat St Peter’s. All 13 schools took part.

The first half of the quiz is a written test and then the two members of the various teams step forward and pick another four words to write on the flip-chart.

It’s all rather tense for ten and 11-year-olds but they’re surprisingly cool.

Winning duo this year were 10-year-olds Millie Forrest and Dylan Smethurst who aren’t even in the top class at Ashleigh, so they could be back next year.

They dropped only one point out of the 84 they tackled, beating Oliver Harkness and Bradley Oliver (St Peter’s) by one with Lyndsay Townsend and Alice Hegarty (St Barnabas’) a further point away third.

St Stephen’s got every question right last year and this time the quiz was toughened up a bit with the introduction into the near 200-word learn-list of, for instance, minuscule, beleaguered, mischievous, accommodation and manoeuvre – a group of five words that 95 per cent of adults wouldn’t get right.

Try them at home or at work and see if I’m right! Prizes were presented by Rotary president Mrs Thelma Millington, a retired teacher, who said that the contest taught children not only spelling but teamwork.

Incidentally, she recalled her first class in 1951 in Bolton – she had 49 children to keep an eye on!