Competition Guidelines:

Rules & General Guidelines: 

• The contestants will be present in the room, facing the judges, audience behind them, they should sit in the order of the scoring sheet.
• The child steps up to stand in front of the judges to spell the word.
• The spelling bee judging panel will internally select the competition’s official pronouncer by testing the pronunciation accuracy and clarity of its members. The panel will identify the first, second and third choice. The first choice will pronounce throughout the competition, the second and third will respectively replace him in case of emergency.
• In competition, after the pronouncer gives the speller a word, the speller will be encouraged to pronounce the word before spelling it and after spelling it.
  • the pronouncer will be assured that the speller has heard the word correctly if he or she pronounces it before beginning to spell it
  • The judges will know that the speller is done when he or she pronounces the word after spelling.
• The judges may not disqualify a speller for failing to pronounce the word either before or after spelling it.
• The speller may ask the pronouncer to say the word again, define it, and/or use it in a sentence. The pronouncer shall grant all such requests until the judges agree that the word has been made reasonably clear to the contestant. Judges may disqualify any speller who ignores a request to start spelling.
• Having started to spell a word, a speller may stop and start over, retracing the spelling from the beginning, but in retracing there can be no change of letters or their sequence from those first pronounced. If letters or their sequence is changed in the respelling, the speller will be eliminated. In other words, a speller can’t correct himself, even while it is still his or her turn. (Each contestant would spell one word and then progress to the next contestant)
• The words to be spelled are selected from the following class readers:
  1. Crazy Horse - Level G
  2. Hannibal – Level H
  3. Hung Wu – Level H
• The contest shall be conducted in rounds. With the level of difficulty increasing per round.
  1. Round One: Level G Words from Selection
  2. Round Two: Level G Words from readers’ Dictionaries
  3. Round three: Level H words from Selection
  4. Round four: Level H Words from readers’ Dictionaries
• If a word has one or more homonyms, the pronouncer will indicate which word is to be spelled. If the listed word is not properly identified, either by defining it or using it in a sentence, any correct spelling of any homonym of the word will be accepted.
• Judges are in complete control of the competition. Their decisions are final. Spelling bees are not unlike sporting events in which referees call the plays as they see them. Players don’t always agree with the decisions or like them, but accept them as part of good sportsmanship.
• This is the most important rule of all. Please have fun and relax, whether you’re a participant or a spectator.

Progression Process:

• Contestants will move from round 2 to round three based on their cumulative score of rounds 1 & 2.
• After Round Two the judges choose those who have spelled correctly all the words given to them. If there are more than the allowed number of contestants eligible to move to round three a knock out round will be done; as soon as a child makes a mistake they are out.
• Round three: Same as round 1 & 2. Five contestants should be chosen to go to the next round.  A knock out round may be needed.
• Final Round:   basically a knock out round.
  • When the number of spellers is reduced to two, the elimination procedure changes. At that point, when one speller misspells a word, the other speller shall be given an opportunity to spell that same word. If the second speller spells that word correctly, plus the next word on the pronouncer’s list, then the second speller shall be declared the champion.
  • If one of the last two spellers and the other, after correcting the error, misspells the new word submitted to him/her, then the misspelled new word shall be given to the first speller. If the first speller then succeeds in correcting the error and correctly spells the next word on the list, then he or she becomes the champion.
  • If both spellers misspell the same word, both shall continue in the contest and the one who first misspelled the word shall be given a new word to spell.