House Spelling Competition 2010
On Friday the 12th of March, in the darkness of the theatre, nine contestants aged between 8 and 13 spelled out words in front of the rest of the school, over two hundred children, three contestants from each house. From Waterloo there was Oliver Law from year 4, William Garthwaite from year 6, and James Beaumont from year 8. In Trafalgar there was Oscar Powell from year 4, Isaac Fletcher from year 6, and Alex McSwiggan in year 7. In Agincourt we had Emma Coe from year 4, Hugh Grindon from year 6, and Tilly Campbell from year 7.
The first round in the competition was simple, the ‘Solo Speed Spell' where the contestants from each of the three categories, junior, middle and senior would go up onto the stage, and they had just one minute to spell as many words correctly as possible. Miss Hendry, one of our English teachers, would tell them the words to spell. The words they had to spell were up on a screen behind the contestant for the audience to see. Simple, but it got harder as the round progressed.
The second round was very much harder. It was ‘Backwards Bedlam'. This was very much like the first round, except the nine contestants stood there and spelled the words thrown at them by Miss Hendry backwards and they had one minute, thirty seconds to do this. This is an extremely difficult thing to do. Only the best two from each category would go through to the third and final round.
In the last round of this extraordinary event there was the ‘letter by letter spell off' in which the best two from each category were sent to spell out words, each one doing just one letter at a time, to decide who was the Highfield senior, middle or junior spelling champion. They were given two cards, and if one contestant made a mistake they would lose a card. If they made a mistake with no cards left then they would lose. In this final the juniors went first. It was between Oscar Powell for Trafalgar and Oliver Law for Waterloo. Oliver made one mistake, then another. Then he made an excellent comeback with Oscar losing both of his cards. Oliver went on to win in the category. Then there came the middles. Competing was Hugh Grindon from Agincourt and Isaac Fletcher from Trafalgar. Hugh did the same as Oliver, losing both cards, and then making an outstanding comeback. And finally in the seniors there was James Beaumont for Waterloo and Alex McSwiggan from Trafalgar. Alex made one mistake, then another, and then, unfortunately for him he made his third and last mistake on the first ‘a' in ‘haemorrhage'. James therefore, won.
And so, in the final round, which house won? Trafalgar had no winners, but Agincourt had one – Hugh. However, Waterloo, with two winners – Oliver and James – just beat the other houses to the trophy. May I say that it takes serious bravery to stand up in front of over 200 people and spell words that are very difficult for that age group, and it takes serious talent to get into a final of a competition like that, so well done to all the finalists in that amazing competition.