SeDoMoCha crowns top four spellers in grade 2

By Stuart Hedstrom 
Staff Writer

    DOVER-FOXCROFT — A few days before the NCAA set its Final Four for the Div. I men’s basketball tournament, the SeDoMoCha Elementary School had a top four of its own in the second grade spelling bee on March 29.

Observer photo/Stuart Hedstrom

    THE (BEE)ST SECOND GRADE SPELLERS — Four students finished as the winners of the SeDoMoCha Elementary grade 2 spelling bee on March 29. From left is Annie Raynes, Cameron Skomars, Cody Chambers and Kholton Perry.

    A field of 20 students from the four homerooms qualified for the March 29 bee, as the competitors stood in front of the classroom with their peers and teachers looking on.
    “You are going to say the word, spell it and say it again,” teacher David Murray told the bee participants before they began. He explained the second-graders could request a definition after he used their word in a sentence for further clarification if they desired.
    With a hat full of spelling words to pull from, Murray took out a slip of paper with the word rustic. After the word was misspelled the next student in the row had to correctly identify the letters in the same word, which they did as a round of applause followed.
    The word house came after rustic, and then worthwhile which ended up causing problems for a few students before one of them spelled the word correctly. The word falter was also spelled incorrectly on several occasions as seven students were left after the first round.
    After the second go around five students remained, with words including honest, cucumber, harness, extreme and weakness. The five all got to stay up after spelling their third-round words correctly, and then the word sentence trimmed the field to four as the teaches decided that these students would all be the grade 2 spelling champions:  Cody Chambers, Kholton Perry, Annie Raynes and Cameron Skomars.
    “Congratulations to the top 20, you all did a fabulous job,” Murray said. “There were a lot of words to study,” he said, adding the words came from a list designed for third-graders.
    The four winners admitted they were nervous standing up in front of everyone, one said his best friend was watching from the front row, but they had fun during the spelling bee.
    “They gave us a list of words,” Chambers said about the studying the foursome did to prepare. They all explained they practiced with the game Sparkle, in which a word is given out and then a group of students provide the correct spelling by taking turns identifying each of the letters.