English Bowl Final

This past Saturday, we had the extremely exciting final English bowl event! Students from each of the four schools in the district gathered in Beit Sahour for the final rounds of competition. At this stage, the best two students in each grade in Spelling Bee and Mini-talk would compete against the winner's at each of the other schools.

Competition began with the Mini-Talk. The 24 students (2 students from each of the grades 8th, 9th, and 10th from each of the four schools) gathered in a room on the third floor to receive the rules and instructions. Then, beginning with the 8th graders, students were called one by one to pick two prompts out of a basket. After considering each prompt, the students picked their favorite and were sent into the writing room where they were allowed 15 minutes to write their two minute speech and then transfer notes onto note cards. They were only allowed the note cards while on stage. Needless to say, most of the students were quite nervous! Not only was this a very short amount of time in which to prepare a speech, they would also be performing the speech in front of four judges they had never met and many of their peers from all over the school district.

The audience.

I have to say, that I was so proud of them! I only got to hear two of my students' speeches since I was in the preparation room facilitating the activity, but I was very happy with them and how they did! It is not small task to give a presentation in front of a large audience like this one. One of the major goals of the English Bowl was to equip our students with the skills and tools necessary to give impromptu speeches in English, a very powerful skill today. I think that even just the training we did at the individual school level was worthwhile for these students. To see them actually give their speeches successfully made me very proud indeed!

The 10th grade spellers.

After lunch, it was time for the Spelling Bee. Starting with the 8th graders, two students from each school gathered on stage with the judges to do their best at spelling words. They first few rounds were with words from lists the students had been given beforehand. Later rounds featured words the students had not seen on lists before. I was so impressed with the students ability to memorize and spell many difficult words in English! Having grown up with SpellCheck, I have to admit that my spelling skills are not perfect and there were several words that I am not sure I could have spelled correctly.

The Spelling Bee turned out to be a very competitive game with emotions racing. Not having competed in a spelling bee before, I don't know how competitive they normally are, but I was impressed by how seriously the schools took this competition.

All in all it was a very busy and fun day. I am so proud of my students and all the students for everything they have learned and accomplished, both this year and in this area in particular!