Creating Bzzz For Spelling Bees

How Teachers Can Get Their Students Excited About Spelling Bees

By
Relationship Advice Expert April Masini

I'm an elementary school teacher and work a lot with my kids on their spelling skills. Some of the kids are really talented spellers and I'm trying to encourage them to enter the school-wide spelling bee. Unfortunately, the kids are extremely timid and frightened by the thought of standing up in front of the school and reciting words. Sometimes it's a struggle to even hold a spelling bee in class because the kids get so nervous they're going to mess up. As a teacher, how can I make spelling bees more appealing and encourage my students to participate?

Sincerely,

It's Just a Spelling Bee

Dear It's Just a Spelling Bee,

Spelling bees became popular again recently, after Starbucks produced the movie, Akeelah and the Bee. In addition, because there are so many cable and television channels, there's a "news hole" to be filled, and spelling bees became televised -- on ESPN! Spelling bees were seen as sport. And while it's great to popularize this wonderful way of exercising the mind, the competition aspect scared a lot of children off from participating in spelling bees. The televised and dramatized spelling bees emphasized the tension, as any good sports or dramatic story will. But in real life, this tension of the audience waiting for the correct answer from a child, with bated breath, the winner -- and the loser. The pressure for a child can be inordinate.

So....one thing that educators can do to encourage the tradition of spelling bees is to take the pressure off of the winning and the losing. Making the spelling bees fun will do wonders in promoting their popularity.

Here are some tips for making the spelling bees more of a fun learning experience and less of a pressure cooker that scares off children:

* Make the spelling bees shorter in duration. Instead of lining up the ENTIRE classroom, just have groups of six children at one time compete. Then another six. Overlap, so kids have more than one shot at a time.

* Give prizes to the winners and the losers, so that everyone is a winner.

* Consider having spelling bees in gradations of difficulty and let the CHILDREN themselves decide what level they want to be in, so they can have some control over where they are in the game.

* Rename the spelling bee, "Spelling Games."

April Masini -- nicknamed "the new millennium's Dear Abby" by the media, is author of the best-selling books Date Out Of Your League and Think & Date Like A Man, the two (just released) step-by-step dating and relationship manuals, Ideas for a Fun Date and Romantic Date Ideas, and the critically acclaimed dating and relationship online magazine www.AskApril.com.

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