Victory Elementary 3rd Grade Spelling Bee Rules
Victory will be having it’s first Annual Spelling Bee for 3rd grade during
school on June 11th. There will be 3 contestants from each classroom. There
will be a classroom bee held before this date to find the top 3 spellers in
the classroom. A list will be sent home with each child in Wednesday folders
for those who want to prepare for the bee. However, the Merriam-Webster’s
Collegiate® Dictionary will serve as the final authority and any words we
deem at a third grade level are fair game when we have exhausted the list.
1. Officials of the Spelling Bee will include two or three Spelling
Marshalls (who will also play the roles of judges) and a Time
Keeper/Arbitrator.
2. The Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate® Dictionary will serve as the final
authority for the spelling and definitions of words used in the competition.
If a word has two or more accepted spellings, only the spellings set in
boldface type and separated by the word “or” and in some cases the
word “also” at the beginning of the descriptive matter, will be accepted as
correct. Spellings labeled as archaic, obsolete (abbreviated obs) and
regional (like North, Midland, South, Brit(ish), Irish) that are different
from those in bold-face type will not be accepted as correct.
3. The Spelling Marshall will make every effort to pronounce the words
according to the diacritical markings in the official Spelling Bee
dictionary. After pronouncing the word, the Spelling Marshall may clarify
the word by using it in a sentence if necessary and also repeat the word.
Typically for each grade, the first 2 or 3 rounds will come from the first
50 words in the lists, the next 2 or 3 rounds from the next 50 etc. The
Spelling Bee Officials will ultimately decide how many rounds per batch of
words will be appropriate. To minimize bias, each word to be assigned to a
speller will be determined using a table of random numbers generated for the
purpose.
4. Each speller is encouraged to:
a. Pronounce the word before spelling. This is to ensure that the student
heard the word correctly.
b. Say the word again after it is spelled, to indicate spelling is complete.
This “say-spell-say” procedure should be followed to ensure that: (1) the
speller understands the correct pronunciation of the word, and (2) the
judges know when the spelling is complete and that no more letters will be
added. The Spelling Marshall may stop the student if he/she fails to
pronounce the word before spelling or if it is pronounced incorrectly. Note:
The judges may not disqualify a speller for failing to pronounce the word
either before or after spelling it.
5. For clarification before beginning to spell, the speller may ask the
Spelling Marshall to say the word again, define it, or use it in a sentence.
Such requests will be granted until the officials agree that the word has
been made reasonably clear to the speller.
6. A contestant may stop and start over, re-tracing the spelling of a word
from the beginning. Self correction is allowed during re-tracing the
spelling of a word i.e after beginning the spelling of the word, he/she may
start over and change the order of the letters. In such a case, the final
spelling attempt will be the one used in determining the correctness of the
word spelled. For clarity, and to avoid misunderstanding, the student must
indicate verbally when he/she is starting over.
