The fourth annual Alameda Spelling Bee held at Otis Elementary School Feb. 2, saw last year’s third place finisher, Ella Banchieri, take the honor as the Island’s top speller for 2019. She and second-place finisher Elena Morishige dueled through spelling increasingly difficult words. The words in the final showdown included: phenomenon, complexion, propinquity, ricochet, tumultuous, surveillance, aggregation (which both spellers misspelled), catastrophe, circumference, dementia and finally, scrumptious.
This Saturday, Feb. 3, marks the fourth year of the Alameda Spelling Bee. The contest to prove the best student speller in town takes place at 9 a.m. at Otis Elementary School, 3010 Fillmore St., and is open to Alameda students in grades 4 through 9.
The top spellers receive trophies courtesy of Alameda Awards & Recognition and sponsorship to county-level competition courtesy of the Alameda Elks Lodge.
Registration is now open for the second annual Alameda Spelling Bee, sponsored by the Alameda Elks Lodge and the Alameda Sun, to be held at Otis Elementary School on Saturday, Feb. 6, from 9:30 a.m. to noon.
All students in grades 4 through 9 who reside or attend school in the city of Alameda are eligible to participate. Prizes will be given to top spellers, and winners from both the elementary and middle-school grade levels will be sponsored to participate in the Alameda County Bee, set for Saturday, March 12.
In recent weeks I helped host a citywide spelling bee in Alameda that was thought to be the first such event in recent memory. It has come to my attention that a district-wide spelling bee in 1900 holds an important place in Alameda history.
