The first West Norfolk Academy Trust Spelling Bee competition came to its exciting conclusion this week as Springwood hosted the grand final on Tuesday 24^th September, in front of a home crowd of year seven students.

The competition was high as the top achieving spellers from across the trust were represented. Springwood High School, St Clements High School, Marshland High School and Smithdon High School each fielded three finalists, leading to a tense face off between the final twelve.  Each school held spelling bee competitions within years 7 and 8 in the summer term, narrowing down their students to the best of the best ready for this week’s final.

Being the first trust-wide spelling competition held, the outcome was eagerly awaited, and the standard of competitors was highly impressive.  They were all a credit to themselves and their respective schools.

Students were required to each stand in front of the crowd and spell a selected word from memory.  They were allowed to ask for the word to be repeated, to have a definition and to hear it in a sentence; they were only allowed to correct themselves once for each word.

As the competition slowly narrowed the field to a final two, the atmosphere grew more intense.  Despite this, the competitors held their nerve and remained on top form, competing in a final ‘sudden death’ round to establish a winner.

The final two wowed the crowd with their spelling and eventually a winner was crowned: Elisabeth Mathew, representing Springwood High School, narrowly beat Lyndsey Guardado from Smithdon High School, to be awarded with an Amazon Kindle as a prize.

West Norfolk Academy Trust are now looking forwards to our next spelling bee competition, due to be held in the summer term of 2020.