Ayr schoolkids reach semi finals of national spelling contest

Mar 26 2010 by Stuart Wilson, Ayrshire Post (main ed)

THEY’RE top of the class when it comes to spelling.

And a group of Ayr schoolkids could become best of British.

The talented bunch, from Belmont Academy, showed cool heads under pressure to correctly spell some of the toughest words in the dictionary.

Now they’ll face the challenge of the country’s best schools to try and land the title of top spellers.

Belmont teacher Janet Dale, who trained the team for success, praised the effort of her hard working students.

She confessed: “In this day and age, more and more children tend to rely on computer spell checkers.

“But we’ve always tried to encourage learning of the English language – because it’s one of the most complicated out there.

“And all credit to the pupils here because they studied very hard for the tests and made sure they were fully prepared.”

The school’s smartest spellers were plucked from first year English classes to enter the spelling bee contest, run by The Times newspaper.

And Belmont won their Scottish heat with a stand-out performance from 12-year-olds Catriona Hill, Ollie Dare, Megan Lambie and Lauren Campbell.

The team were asked to spell words like “conscientious” and “oblique” without the aid of a piece of paper.

Pupil Ollie admitted: “It was quite difficult without writing them down. I was asked to spell Argot, which is a language, and other tricky words.”

The team now go forward to the British semi-finals in May, with a place in the London grand final at stake.

Teacher Janet added: “We’re all really excited and hopefully the children get what they deserve for their hard work.

“Our team came second in the Scottish heat last year so we’ve already gone one better.

“It would be great to win and we’re just really proud of everything they’ve achieved so far.”