The Spelling Bee Compromise

For the past few years, our school's PTA has felt important to add a line item in their budget to pay for the opprotunity for our students to participate in the County Spelling Bee every year. Over the past two years, only three students have taken advantage of that chance.
This year, wanting to see more students participate, I decided that I would try something to sweeten the pot and motivate kids to take part. After running the idea by my principal and getting approval, I was curious to see if a proposed compromise to students would peak their interest.

Unfortunately, the subject of Spelling in our building, and other elementary schools around the nation, has somewhat pushed aside for longer periods of Reading and Math, MTSS, etc, etc... This fact was one of the main reasons that "inspired" my compromise. So, what was the compromise?

With six weeks left in the third quarter of our school year, I proposed to my reading group that anyone who participated in the Spelling Bee was exempt from all Spelling tests and spelling activities for the rest of the quarter. The grade that they had at that point, was the grade they would finish with at the end of the quarter. Now, there were some details that had to be worked out in order for this to work.

1. Students had to sign a contract saying that they would participate, and in return, be allowed to forgo classroom Spelling for the rest of the quarter.
2. They were to study the Spelling Bee list on their own or when the rest of the class was testing or doing Spelling activities. They would be responsible for their own learning.
3. Students participating would be allowed to complete our weekly classroom Spelling Contracts using their Spelling Bee lists to raise their current grade if they weren't please with what they earned up to that point.
4. If a student did not participate in the competition after agreeing to do so, their previous missed Spelling scores would turn to "zeros" in the grade book until they made them up.
5. Their parent had to approve of their decision and sign off on their contract.

I knew that I was taking a risk because Spelling is the one subject that parents tend to feel the most passionately about for some reason. But to my surprise, there was overwhelming support and excitement on the part of the parents.

So, you might be asking (or maybe not), did my plan of a great compromise work? I had twelve of the twenty-three students from my reading group choose to participate. And amazingly enough, these students spent more time and effort in to learning that list of words, than they probably had from any other Spelling list up to this point in the year. Did I get the result I wanted? In short, yes. I felt proud for those who wanted the extra challenge and was excited for them to do well in the competition. Next year, I just might make it a mandatory requirement for those in my class.

Update!!!

Today was the Spelling Bee and the kids did great. I was so proud of them to have the courage to stand in front of a large audience and put themselves out there and be presented with a challenge. I was happy to see that all the students made it past the third round and even more exciting, two students finished in the top ten out of about sixty other students from our local area.